YouTube rocked by hackers' 'Porn Day'
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In what is believed to have been a coordinated attack carried out by the infamous 4Chan group of hackers, clips containing nudity and sexual scenes were made available to the sites tens of millions of users.
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On the same day it was revealed that users of YouTube, the world's largest video-sharing site, were uploading more than 20 hours of video footage every minute, the site was hit by a porn scandal which threatened to bring the service into disrepute. Over the course of 24 hours, the site was flooded with a number of pornographic video clips rumoured to be in the tens of thousands.
In what is believed to have been a coordinated attack carried out by the infamous 4Chan group of hackers, clips containing nudity and sexual scenes were made available to the sites tens of millions of users. To circumvent the site's normal moderation policy, they were uploaded with titles referencing such favourite children's entertainers as Hannah Montana and the famous American Christian pop boy band, the Jonas Brothers. The videos began with footage of the artists in question before cutting to video of adults participating in group sex acts, according to the BBC.
It is believed YouTube's moderation team have been working around the clock since the attack to try and take down the offending items, though the process may take weeks or even months thanks to the site's laissez-faire approach to content uploading, which relies on users flagging content as offensive before it is viewed by official representatives of the company.
This is far from the first time the site has been drawn into controversy for the content users upload; currently many music videos have been withdrawn from the site following a series of high profile copyright disputes. The group behind the attack have claimed these removals as their motivation for the ongoing incident, with one attacker telling the BBC "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."
A YouTube spokesperson was keen to downplay the attack, saying "YouTube is a community site used by millions of people in very positive ways. Sadly, as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules."
"We were aware of yesterday's issue and removed the videos as they were brought to our attention through our flagging system, as we would any videos that violate our community guidelines. In addition, any account we discover that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube was also disabled."
4Chan, an image-sharing message board founded in 2003, has been to thank for some of the biggest online phenomena of recent years. Commentators claim they were responsible for the success of such varied internet 'memes' as lolcats, a series of images of kittens captioned in internet slang parlance, and Chocolate Rain, a kitsch YouTube video depicting musician Tay Zonday performing a song about racial disharmony. More recently, its community of highly computer-literate users originated 'rickrollling', a process which involves misleading internet users by tricking them into visiting a website featuring eighties pop star Rick Astley.
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Comments
The regular usenet readers asked the posters to confine their adult materials to the appropriate groups, and the porn posters came back with this lame claim that the first amendment gave them the right to post their porn in every single usenet news group.
I began to smell a huge rate here, and already having learned what the US government was like I started digging and sure enough the flood of porn was coming through various US Government and military sites. And sure enough, one month after the flood of porn showed up on usenet, Senator Exon introduced his amendment to the telecommunications act calling for government control and censorship of the internet, and making any obscenity on the internet a felony. Senator Exon took to the floor and showed his "Blue" book, a blue binder filled with the very images that had flooded usenet for the preceding weeks. And no sooner had the bill passed than the flood of porn ended as if a switch had been thrown.
So, if someone is flooding YouTube with porn, then it is an attempt to revive a call for government control of internet content. So, you need to ask, Que Bono. Who wants the internet brought under censorship
This sounds like something '4channers' would do at their own accord. Unless, you wish to suggest that there are officials under-cover on 4chan, encouraging such action from the actual users, as accused of the police in the recent protests.
How I wish the media would give up on soundbites and actually take time to understand technical terminology - 4Chan are NOT hackers, uploading porn to youtube is NOT a hack. At best, 4chan are "crackers", those who destroy stuff and break into poorly secured computers (generally because everyone else's life is more interesting than their own). At worst they are what is known as "skiddies".
Ask yourself, is uploading mucky pics to youtube technically challenging? Are these actions the results of skilled IT engineers? No, it's a small group of idiots using mummy and daddy's phoneline and computer. Oh and a proxy... that's about 3 mouse clicks and an IP address...
4Chan pick low hanging fruit, easy targets. They are the school bullies who target the weak kids, nothing more. The fact you give them newspaper space is very telling.
Just to reiterate in case the writer of this article missed a trick back in the 80s, "hackers" hack stuff. Hacking is the process of taking a technology and pushing it beyond its design limits in order that it might serve its master better. Taking a toaster, installing Linux on it and making it control your house would be a good hack. Decompiling Windows and rebuilding it such that it does what YOU want it to do (as opposed to what M$ want it to do) would be a good hack. Taking 2 pieces of crappy software and merging them into a good application would be a good hack.
Uploading porn to a website is not a hack. People who do this are not hackers.
You have to, to quote avekill3, "love the /b/tards". Abby Hoffman would think they were HILARIOUS, and so would Cap. Crunch. They REBEL, it's what they do. They do it mindlessly and ignorant of taboo or custom, and thank GOD for them.
If you are getting pissed at their behaviour, you may need to look in the mirror and see what you've lost since the 70's, cause dude, you are WAAY Buggin'
ANON ALWAYS DELIVERS
Get these guys and hand them over to EBay.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla