Microsoft's YouTube Account Hacked

[err0r]

Ruh roh. What has more than 8 million video views, nearly 25,000 subscribers, and absolutely no content whatsoever to view? If you answered, "Microsoft's YouTube page," then you're correct. But it's not a purposeful change from Redmond: The company's video presence appears to have been hacked as of early this morning.

 

According to Mashable's Zoe Fox, a total of four advertising-themed videos were uploaded to the account at around 11:30 E.T. and a fifth, a video entitled "Garry's Mod – Escape the Box," was posted and pulled fairly quickly. Microsoft's YouTube channel has since been blanked out: There's no description and there are no videos, although the channel's country has been changed to the United Kingdom and its hometown now reads, "Hey."

 

It's unclear as to how exactly someone got into Microsoft's account. However, a message previously posted to the channel by the unknown infiltrator attempted to absolve the user from blame: "I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/," read the channel's temporary description, before it too was blanked out.

 

Although frustrating, and likely fixable as soon as the business week starts back up on Monday, the Microsoft hack at least come with a silver lining of sorts. For unlike, say, a certain hack to a certain child-friendly show's YouTube page last week, at least Microsoft's YouTube account was simply wiped instead of filled with pornography.

 

YouTube would have likely taken Microsoft's account offline within a short amount of time if the account's hackers were a bit more unsavory in their actions, much as it did when hackers filled Sesame Street's YouTube account with pornographic content last week. Since YouTube has no tangible reason to pull Microsoft's account thus far, the blanked YouTube channel will continue to persist until Microsoft regains control.

 

"We are aware that someone has altered the YouTube channel devoted to Microsoft videos. We are working with YouTube to rectify the situation," reads a statement by Microsoft.

 

However, this second high-profile attack in recent weeks does bring up a key question: Why doesn't YouTube have (or offer) stronger authentication measures for corporate partner logins? While we can't surmise the difficulty of breaking into a YouTube account, it does seem a bit strange that it's even possible to do so given just how much emphasis Google is now placing on two-step verifications for its accounts.

 

That said, there's no indication that Microsoft, nor Sesame Street, have taken full advantage of YouTube's account security measures as-is. One can imagine that a series of conversations have happened (or will be happening) following these various account hacks.