Internet trolls hack popular YouTube channel WatchMojo

Late Wednesday evening, hackers operating under the name Poodle Corp. compromised the WatchMojo.com YouTube channel and started tagging dozens of videos.

The account hijacking was quickly detected, and the company turned to YouTube for assistance.

WatchMojo is known for their Top 10 videos on a number of topics. In 2013, the brand was listed as the 50th largest channel on YouTube. On Twitter, the company said they’re aware “of the hack on our YouTube channel and we’re working with YouTube to fix the changes.”

After the announcement was made, others encouraged Poodle Corp to delete the channel and all of its content, but the majority of comments were supportive.

The videos altered by the two people claiming responsibility look like the one posted below (click to view full size). Aside form alterations to the video title, and promotion of their Twitter account, nothing else was touched.

Having your YouTube channel compromised is bad enough, but this situation could have been much worse.

Consider for a moment that unrestricted access to a YouTube account could lead to seriously malicious acts, such as directing WatchMojo’s 12 million subscribers to websites that deliver Ransomware or target personal information.

News of the hack reached XSS, as well as non-WatchMojo subscribers, thanks to 11-year-old Maize Wings – who posted a video about it two hours before WatchMoJo confirmed the incident on Twitter. Maize Wings later discussed his thoughts on who was going to be hacked next, but some users took issue with his video’s description of “I’ll hack your channel.”

It isn’t clear how Poodle Corp was able to compromise the WatchMojo YouTube channel. In most cases, incidents like this can be tied to easily guessed passwords, passwords that are recycled, or Phishing.

XSS has reached out to WatchMojo for details, and we’ll update this story should they share additional information.