The South Korean government's official YouTube channel was hacked on Saturday morning to broadcast a video featuring billionaire Elon Musk chatting about cryptocurrency, according to local media reports.
At 3:30 a.m., the channel's name was switched to
"SpaceX Invest," per the Yonhap News Agency. A screenshot posted by
the agency appears to show a clip from a June interview Musk gave to Bloomberg
News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait during the Qatar Economic Forum.
In the interview, Musk discussed how his Tesla and SpaceX
companies had bought bitcoin as a "small percentage" of their cash
assets and said his automaker accepts Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency he helped
boost by 10% after tweeting about it.
The South Korean government became aware of the breach three
hours later and restored its access to the account around 7.20 a.m., the
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said, according to Yonhap.
The agency reported that the YouTube channel's account ID and
password were said to have been stolen.
The channel has around 262,000 subscribers and actively
posts videos on government policies and current events. It's the third YouTube
account run by South Korea's government to have been breached in the last two
weeks, Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo's Lee Jian reported.
The identities and motives of those behind the attacks are
not immediately known, the paper wrote, citing a statement from the Ministry of
Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The Korea Tourism Organization's YouTube channel was
breached twice — once on Thursday and once on Friday — and was suspended until
Sunday, JoongAng Ilbo reported.
Meanwhile, the YouTube channel of South Korea's National
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was also hacked on August 29 to stream a
video about cryptocurrencies, the outlet wrote. It's not clear if this attack
was related to the breach on Sunday.
Google, YouTube's parent company, confirmed the breaches to
Yonhap and Joongang Ilbo, saying it would investigate the cause of the attacks.
Google did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
