The official YouTube channel of Sansad TV was removed by YouTube as it was found ‘violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines’. However, a few hours ago, Sansad Television released an official statement where it revealed the actual reason why the YouTube channel was removed.
As per the statement by the channel, the YouTube channel of Sansad TV was compromised due to activities of scamsters. “YouTube Channel of Sansad TV got compromised due to unauthorized activities by some scamsters on 15 February 2022 (Tuesday 01-00 a.m.) including live streaming on this Channel,” the statement read.
Sansad TV has also revealed that the attacker changed the name of the YouTube channel to “Ethereum”. The name of the channel was later restored by Sansad TV’s social media team in the morning at around 03-45 am.
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the nodal agency for responding to cyber security incidents in India, has also reported the above incident and alerted Sansad TV. “YouTube has started fixing the security threats permanently and it shall be restored ASAP.” the statement further added.
This is not the first time an online channel or account regulated by the government has been attacked by scamsters. There have been several incidents in the past where hackers gained unauthorised access to the government run accounts. A few months ago. The Twitter account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also hacked for a brief period.
The incident saw the hackers put out a tweet from the PM’s Twitter handle — that has millions of followers — claiming that India has “officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender”. Sharing a link and asking people to “hurry up”, the tweet added, “The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country”.