Both YouTube and iTunes were reportedly hacked over the weekend. On the YouTube side, Justin Bieber videos seemed to take the brunt of it. The hackers used a hole in YouTube’s commenting section to inject HTML into YouTube pages, displaying popups and links to porn and malware sites. YouTube patched the hole in a couple of hours, but it’s estimated that thousands of pages were affected.
On the iTunes side, hackers were a bit more nasty. It seems stolen/hacked iTunes accounts were used to make large purchases from the iTunes store…with some iTunes users reportedly being charged for hundreds of dollars of unauthorized purchases. In a twist, the hackers seemed to do this to bump up the rankings of certain apps and ebooks in iTunes. Apple’s response seemed on-par with their recent responses to complaining iPad and iPhone users; they told the iTunes users to change their passwords and credit card numbers…while offering no official statement and no other form of help.
I am ever surprised how stable and unshaken Apple’s reputation is, despite such a major failure to protect its customers. I know one cannot protect one’s site against everything, but a nice consolation or explanation to those affected would be tactful, right?
To compare, if there is just a simple, harmless virus affecting Microsoft products, people start raging over the supposed lack of quality of those.
I’ve always been saying that some people/corporations/institutions know how to control the mob, but I still can’t quite put my finger on how they do it so aptly…