Sesame Street YouTube Hack

Background

On October 16, 2011, the YouTube channel for the American children’s television series Sesame Street was compromised by hackers that deleted the entire channel’s uploaded videos and replaced them with pornographic content. The channel was closed down in less than 30 minutes by YouTube due to “repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines”.

Developments

The same day, the hack was reported by ABC 7 News^[1], TheNextWeb^[2] and was posted on Reddit^[3] reaching the front page with 3,072 up votes. The hacker then changed the name of the account to MrEdXwx^[4] added the following description:

WHO DOESN’T LOVE PORN KIDS? RIGHT! EVERYONE LOVES IT! IM MREDXWX AND MY PARTNER MRSUICIDER91 ARE HERE TO BRING YOU MANY NICE CONTENT! PLEASE DON’T LET SESAME STREET TO GET THIS ACCOUNT BACK KIDS :( PLEASE…LET ME AND MRSUICIDER91 HAVE IT AND WE GONNA MAKE ALL THE AMERICA HAPPY!

The real MrEdxwx posted a video claiming he was not responsible for the hack, and CNN^[5] quoted MrEdXex’s denial of hacking the account in an article on October 17th, 2011.

“I did not hack Sesame Street. I am an honest YouTuber,” the user, identified as “MrEdxwx,” posted on his account. “I work hard to make quality gameplay videos, and most important I respect the community guidelines.”

A thread on the r/4chan^[6] subreddit claimed that 4chan users were responsible for the hack.

External References

^[1] Abc7 News – Sesame Street YouTube channel hacked, taken offline

^[2] Insider – Sesame Street’s YouTube Channel Gets Hacked. Badly.

^[3] Reddit – Sesame Street’s Youtube account hacked

^[4] Youtube – MrEdxwx’s Channel

^[5]CNN – Sesame Street YouTube channel back after porn hack

^[6] Reddit – 4 chan hacked sesame street’s youtube…