Short-video platform Kuaishou Technology reported a major cyberattack to the police after a breach on Monday evening allowed explicit content to flood high-traffic live rooms for more than an hour.
Kuaishou’s live-streaming services were thrown into chaos at around 10pm when recommended feeds were inundated with explicit material, according to news website Sina. Viewership in some compromised rooms surged past 50,000 before the platform launched an emergency response.
By 11.30pm, Kuaishou began a mass deletion of the videos and closed its live-streaming channels, according to Sina, adding that services began to gradually resume at 2am on Tuesday.
Kuaishou said on Tuesday that the cyberattack was carried out by “black and grey industries” – an underground ecosystem of illegal and legally ambiguous activities, ranging from cybercrime to bot-driven fraud.
The company has filed a formal report with the police and notified the appropriate regulatory bodies. Kuaishou did not respond to a request for comment.
“The Kuaishou breach serves as a triple wake-up call,” said William Wei, vice-president and chief operations officer of Chinese cybersecurity firm WebRAY. Wei said cybersecurity had evolved into a “lifeblood” and dictated a company’s long-term prospects. Hacker motives had shifted from financial gain to destruction, he added.