Christmas Day YouTube hack
| Victim(s) | YouTube, Popular Youtubers such as FRED |
|---|---|
| Perpetrator(s) | Unidentified (Possibly the user MeiAIDS) |
| Date of hack | 25/12/09 |
| Damage | None |
On December 25, 2009, the popular website YouTube was hacked by an unknown internet user.[1]
The hack[edit]
That morning, an anonymous user would breech YouTubes security, possibly through cross-site scripting. The user would change channel profile pictures and video thumbnails of many popular figures of the platform such as FRED, Ray William Johnson, Shane Dawson[2] and other figureheads of YouTube. The Images in question included a photo of musician Damo Suzuki, the Sanrio cartoon character Piano-Chan and a plastic toy figure of Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise among others.
The response from the YouTube community[edit]
Despite the breech of YouTubes security, many content creators saw the hack as not a threat, but simply light hearted fun and nothing but trolling. The story was very much discussed throughout the following days by users, however (as there was no significant damage to YouTubes website) the topic would quickly fall out of relevancy and was rarely brought up in conversation over the years. As well as this, YouTube was a more niche website hen it is today, thus the mainstream media didn't pick the story up either.
The search for the perpetrator[edit]
Judging of off the images in the hack, some speculated early on that the YouTube Poop Community caused the hack as they were known to cause low-level mischief with humorous intent, especially at the time. In particular, some keener eyes speculated that user "MeiAIDS" may of been the one responsible for the hack. He often frequented the YouTube Poop forum known as YouChew. He was Active from 2007 up until the abandonment of his main account in 2012[3] (although some claim he was prevalent on several other accounts for years forward). Mai was known for two things. The first, his YouTube Poops, the second was that he operated on multiple different YouTube accounts, most getting removed for the attention seeking stunts he would pull. Mei often discussed on the forums about his love for internet pornography, with a presence for yiff and hentai. He was known as one of the kings of trolling among the YouTube Poop Community. A main clue is that one of the images used in the hack was that of Conrad Slater, the founder of YouChew. Secondly the image of Piano-Chan used during the hack was that of a previous alt accounts profile picture that Mei in May–October 2009. Some even reported that MeiAIDS confessed to the hack on December 27 in a since deleted video that is now been considered lost media.[4] The existence of this video has been heavily disputed as a made up rumour, however some still report that not only the video was real, that they were first hand witnesses. Whilst nothing is fully conformed, there is a strong case file against MeiAIDS that would suggest he was the hacker.
References[edit]
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