YouTube suffers hacking attack

Darren Allan

July 5, 2010

Yesterday, YouTube was hit by a scripting attack which exploited an XSS vulnerability.

Which, in English, means that the hackers in question were able to post JavaScript code which could be run on the viewing person’s computer, to the comments section underneath the videos.

That’s a pretty serious issue, although fortunately the miscreants in question just used the flaw to prank people. Admittedly in very bad taste, if reports are to be believed, but at least it didn’t attempt to seriously compromise anybody’s machine.

Google was pretty quick to react to the situation, and had comments temporarily disabled within the hour, while they worked on a fix which came within another hour.

Apparently the hackers targeted teen pop star Justin Bieber’s videos, redirecting visitors to adult sites, and also claiming that the singer had passed away.






 

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