The official YouTube channel of the Supreme Court of India has been hacked. Instead of broadcasts of court hearings, the channel has been replaced with videos advertising the XRP cryptocurrency of the American company Ripple.
In addition to the cryptocurrency videos, the channel also aired a blank video titled “Brad Garlinghouse: Ripple Responds to $2 Billion Fine from SEC. XRP PRICE FORECAST.” The video appeared during the channel’s broadcast of the court case involving the rape and murder of a medical intern at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital.
This was the first time that the Indian Supreme Court’s YouTube channel had been hacked. In 2018, the court decided to livestream all its constitutional court proceedings, and its channel has amassed around 217,000 subscribers.
A senior Supreme Court official said the hack was discovered on Friday morning and the Supreme Court IT team contacted the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for help. The police’s Digital Crime Unit is investigating the incident. However, it took several hours for the Supreme Court staff to regain control of the channel and remove the fake content. It is not known how many subscribers fell for the tricks.
Last year, hackers broke into Indian news channel News24, which has over 1.3 million Twitter followers, advertising an “annual giveaway” of 100,000,000 XRP. A few years ago, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse sued YouTube for publishing fake videos in his name, demanding compensation from the platform for damage to the company’s reputation.
