On September 3rd, 2022, the official YouTube channel of the South Korean government was jeopardized by a group of hackers who logged into it, changed its name to SpaceX, and used it to promote a cryptocurrency scam with the image of Elon Musk, the electric car tycoon and Dogecoin enthusiast.
According to Yonhap News, the local media outlet, the hackers changed the name of the government channel to “SpaceX Invest” to pretend to make people believe it was related to the U.S. aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company owned by Musk.
The scammers then went ahead to post several videos of interviews where Elon Musk talked about cryptocurrencies. However, the government detected the hack in good time and suspended the account for 4 hours while trying to identify the flaw’s origin.
A spokesperson from South Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in charge of managing the YouTube account, announced that the government is working with Google Korea to determine how the hackers were able to carry out their attack but suspects that the channel’s ID and password might have been stolen.
This is not the first hack suffered by the government last week. Last Thursday, the YouTube channel operated by the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) suffered a two-day attack, leading to the channel being suspended indefinitely.
In addition, several hacks have affected cryptocurrency exchanges, government officials, and Hollywood stars such as Bill Murray.