Elon Musk Crypto Interview Streams on Korean Government’s YouTube

• The South Korean government’s YouTube channel was breached for streaming cryptocurrency videos.
• The cyber attacker renamed the channel “SpaceX Invest” and broadcast an interview with Elon Musk.
• It is the third YouTube channel run by South Korea’s government to be hacked in the past two weeks.

The South Korean government’s official YouTube channel was hacked on Saturday morning for broadcasting a video of billionaire Elon Musk chatting about cryptocurrency, according to local media.

At 3:30 a.m., the channel’s name was changed to “SpaceX Invest,” according to Yonhap News Agency. A screenshot posted by the agency appears to show a clip from a June interview Musk gave to Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait during the Qatar Economic Forum.

In the interview, Musk discussed how his Tesla and SpaceX companies had bought bitcoin as a “small percentage” of their cash holdings and said his automaker accepts Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency he helped spike by 10% after tweeting about it.

The South Korean government became aware of the breach three hours later and restored access to the account around 7:20 a.m., the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said, according to Yonhap.

The agency reported that the YouTube channel’s account ID and password were allegedly stolen.

The channel has around 262,000 subscribers and actively posts videos about government policy and current events. It is the third YouTube account run by South Korea’s government to be breached in the past two weeks, Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo’s Lee Jian reported.

The identities and motives of those behind the attacks are not immediately known, writes the newspaper, citing a statement from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The Korea Tourism Organization’s YouTube channel was breached twice — once on Thursday and once on Friday — and was suspended until Sunday, JoongAng Ilbo reported.

Meanwhile, the YouTube channel of South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was also hacked on Aug. 29 for streaming a video about cryptocurrencies, the outlet wrote. It is not clear if this attack was related to the breach on Sunday.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, confirmed the breaches to Yonhap and Joongang Ilbo, and said it would investigate the cause of the attacks. Google did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.