Drake, Chris Brown, & Justin Bieber Music Videos Defaced by Hackers

A widespread cyber attack on Vevo’s YouTube account altered, defaced, and/or momentarily disabled popular music videos from Drake, Chris Brown, and Justin Bieber.

Hackers broke into the most-viewed music video of all time, Bieber, Luis Fonsi, and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” It came down for a brief period after its cover image was replaced with a still from Netflix’s “Casa de Papel.”

Vevo addressed the hack in a statement (via Billboard). “Vevo can confirm that a number of videos in its catalogue were subject to a security breach today, which has now been contained,” the company said. “We are working to reinstate all videos affected and our catalogue to be restored to full working order. We are continuing to investigate the source of the breach.”

The hack went beyond “Despacito” and included Drake’s “God Plan” and popular videos by Chris Brown, Post Malone, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Shakira, among others. It’s unclear who the alleged hackers are, but they are calling themselves Prosox and Kuroi’sh, according to BBC.

They replaced cover images and added different messages to the videos. The BBC report claims that the hackers also added “Free Palestine” as one of those messages. One of the hackers reportedly took to Twitter to say it was a simple hack, but Prof. Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert from Surrey University, said this was more likely complicated than that.

“To upload and alter video content with code you should require an authorization token,” he explained. “So, either this hacker has found a way around that need for authorization, or they are being economical with the facts, or they obtained the permissions in some other way.”