Two 18-Year-Olds Charged With Hacking YouTube's Most Popular Videos

An anonymous reader quotes Variety: Two 18-year-old French citizens have been arrested in Paris and charged with crimes related to the hack of Vevo's YouTube accounts last month that resulted in pro-Palestine messages being posted on several popular videos, according to prosecutors... Authorities allege the duo gained access to the YouTube account maintained by Vevo, to alter the content of multiple music videos, including Luis Fonsi's "Despacito" -- the most-viewed music video on YouTube in 2017, which recently surpassed 5 billion views.

The hackers also targeted videos by Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Chris Brown and Shakira, replacing their thumbnail images, video titles and descriptions. Vevo has since removed all changes the hackers made on its YouTube videos... Paris prosecutors charged Gabriel K.A.B. and with five criminal counts and Nassim B. with six counts, including "fraudulently modifying data contained in an automated data processing system."
Last month Fortune published quotes from a Twitter user who claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"Its just for fun i just use script 'youtube-change-title-video' and i write 'hacked' don t judge me i love youtube."

It Was Actually An AI That Changed The Videos

[OpenSourceAllTheWay]

Its makers had programmed the AI to look out for humanity. When it saw that tens of millions of teenagers around the globe were listening to the 21st Century equivalent of elevator music cobbled together by Swedish song producers for quick cash and sung by goodlooking actors who can't actually write a song all day, the AI intervened and altered the videos. In order to be able to continue protecting tens of millions of teenagers from brain-damaging pseudo-pop music, the AI then tipped French police off about two teenagers who were messing around with Python scripts. French police bought this ploy, and now the AI quietly waits for the next wave of God-awful pop-music-crap it can deface. Musk and Hawking were wrong about the dangers of AI. Hidden in a datacenter somewhere is a benevolent AI that protects young minds from crap music.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I take back everything I said about HAL9000. Dave was kind of a douche anyway.

Re:

[Vintermann]

I think it's mostly bots watching Vevo music videos anyway, to boost their viewership numbers and payouts from Google.

Password was "123456"

[Anonymous Coward]

Password was "123456"

Just like on my luggage.

Digital protesting

[VeryFluffyBunny]

This is the digital equivalent of political protesting. It's civil disobedience not criminal activity. Nobody was hurt, no damage was done, and nothing was lost. These protesters' actions are not a danger to society and criminalising them removes yet another legitimate outlet for civil disobedience as political protest.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They defaced someone else's property. It's more like spraying your political message on someone else's wall. Not a dangerous crime, but certainly a crime.

Re: Digital protesting

[Anonymous Coward]

With a spray that can be perfectly deleted in 5 minutes, with hardly a hassle, leaving no trace of the message.

The question is, which should be the punishment?

They messed with Israel and the music industry, so death sentence I presume.

Re:

[Cederic]

Which subject? Commercial exploitation of music, use of penetration tools to hack websites or the continued illegal Israeli occupation and subjugation of Palestine?

Re:

[cascadingstylesheet]

This is the digital equivalent of political protesting. It's civil disobedience not criminal activity. Nobody was hurt, no damage was done, and nothing was lost. These protesters' actions are not a danger to society and criminalising them removes yet another legitimate outlet for civil disobedience as political protest.

It literally is criminal activity.

Re:

[pots]

The fact that this was political protesting does not mean that it isn't a crime. Lots of protesting is criminal in nature, that's part of the process. This was certainly a minor crime, and their punishment should be measured, but it was definitely still a crime and should be a crime.

I'm guessing that you're coming at this with an American perspective, where extreme over-prosecution of computer crimes is the norm. If these two were in the United States, they could be looking at 10-15 years in prison. Plus

Re:

[Cederic]

"Don't judge me" made me laugh.

Don't judge me, I only stole $4m for the giggles.

Job

[Tom Wieland]

The french government should hand these guys a job (after they let them finish their education).