Redmond, Washington — Late last week, according to tech site Geekwire reporting that in the second high-profile YouTube channel hack in a week, an unidentified hacker broke into Microsoft’s YouTube channel and has apparently been wiped clean of videos on Sunday.
What boasts more than 8 million video views, and almost 25,000 subscribers, and absolutely no content whatsoever to view? If you responded: “Microsoft’s YouTube page,” then you are precisely correct. But it is not a purposeful change from Redmond: The company’s video presence appears to have completely been ransacked as of late Sunday.
According to Geekwire reported that several short new videos, one of which was titled “April Fools,” were uploaded in place of Microsoft’s branded clips and solicited advertisements for the channel but appeared to be removed as of Monday morning. Geek Wire described the new uploads as “rudimentary.”
“The background on the channel has been replaced and all of the company’s archived videos, including those for its newly launched advertising campaign, have been removed,” it said.
As of 4 a.m. Monday, all videos were evidently removed from Microsoft’s YouTube channel, with the message that “Microsoft has no videos available.”
In addition, the background on the channel has been completely altered to one that contains the title “Predator Cinema,” and a cryptic message has been posted to the page that reads: “I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/”
WE ARE SPONSORING SUBBOX US AND MESSAGE US TO GET AN UPLOAD!
According to Mashable’s Zoe Fox, a total of four advertising-oriented 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 is 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.”
Although pretty disappointing, 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.
Geekwire said it communicated with Microsoft, which confirmed the hacking and said it is “aware that someone has altered the YouTube channel devoted to Microsoft videos.”
“We have regained control of the Microsoft channel on YouTube, and we are working to rectify all of the original content,” a Microsoft representative said in a statement. “We will continue to work with YouTube to ensure safeguards are in place for the future.”
The profile of the Microsoft channel indicates it has 8.212 million upload views and has 24,561 subscribers.
This is the second high-profile YouTube channel to be hacked in the past week. Earlier, Sesame Street saw its YouTube channel being hacked, leaving its normally family-friendly content replaced with pornographic content.