These days, those with the biggest platforms on social media are celebrities . They dominate our news cycles, constantly set trends, and are the crowned royalty of Instagram, Twitter, etcetera. They can bring thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of eyes to a certain statement in a matter of seconds.
It’s no wonder that, for a group aiming to get a message out there, using a celebrity’s social media platforms would be their plan of action.
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Strange announcements from a Twitter account named Los Pelaos led to a series of YouTube hackings.
The account tweeted only in Spanish, stating every new musical artist whose YouTube channel they’d broken into. “We just hacked Travis Scott,” the now-deleted @lospeloaosbro account would write in the early morning this past Tuesday. “[Who’s] next?”
Their list of victims has grown quite large.
Alongside the four already mentioned, they also hacked into Michael Jackson, The Weeknd, Taylor Swift, and Lil Nas X’s accounts.
What have they been doing with the power? Uploading a music video.
When uploaded to Justin Beiber’s account, the video was titled, “Justin Beiber – Free Paco Sanz (ft. Will Smith, Chris Rock, Skinny flex & Los Pelaos)”.
Paco Sanz is a Spanish conman who was sentenced to two years in jail for fraud after he lied about having terminal cancer and defrauded large amounts of money between 2010 and 2017.
The video features Sanz as he holds a guitar backward and sings along to a Spanish trap song remixed by La Mafia Del Edit.
The videos were quickly taken down, but not before they got thousands of views.
Vevo, the company through which these artists distribute their usual music videos, said in a statement, “Some videos were directly uploaded to a small number of Vevo artist channels earlier today by an unauthorized source. While the artist channels have been secured and the incident has been resolved, as a best practice Vevo will be conducting a review of our security systems.”
And it appears that Los Pelaos doesn’t plan on stopping.
Days after the mass YouTube hacking, they tweeted before the account was removed, “Give us ideas of possible platforms to hack. We do not attack governments, only private companies.” They’re hoping to get their plea for freedom in front of many more eyes yet.
h/t: Gizmodo
