An official Google YouTube channel looks like it got hacked

Security is hard. Even with all the fantastic tools we have access to, designed to help keep our accounts and information private, actually maintaining good security requires ongoing effort, making sure we’re taking full advantage of those resources and constantly updating our methods. Because all it takes is one little slip-up for an attacker to get a foothold. If despite your best efforts you’ve still found yourself a victim, take heart — you’re not alone. And today, you’d find yourself in particularly noteworthy company, as Google itself appears to have been hacked.

YouTube takeovers are a particularly visible attack, where high-profile channels are targeted by bad guys looking to get all those subscriber eyes on their latest fraud — and quite often, that means some sort of crypto scam.

When an individual creator is targeted, that’s bad enough. But a few hours ago, the official YouTube account for Google India went offline, and the apparent screenshots we’ve seen from immediately prior to it going down sure make it look like Google has joined that club.

These come from Rishi on Telegram, capturing a stream from the seemingly hacked account. As you can see, it is laser-focused on promoting its crypto interests.

Because this account hosted videos used extensively by Google India, the company’s blog and news posts in the nation are now full of broken embeds.

We don’t mean to shame Google here — some poor employee is probably having just the worst day possible, right now — but if this hack really is what it appears to be, this incident can still manage to serve as a very powerful message about vulnerability.

We’ve reached out to Google in the hopes of confirming exactly what transpired with this YouTube channel earlier today, and if hackers really did gain control as it appears. We’ll update this post with anything new we’re able to learn.