The Youtube channel of Sansad TV, which is operated by Parliament and live-streams House proceedings, came under attack by hackers early Tuesday, after which it was blocked by the social media platform for about 15 hours. It was restored around 6.30 pm. Sansad TV said in a statement issued earlier in the day that it was “compromised by scamsters”. According to official sources, the channel was initially attacked by hackers soon after midnight and restored around 3 am. It soon came under attack again, they said, leading to the channel being blocked by YouTube for most of the day. Google, which owns YouTube, did not respond to queries from The Indian Express on the incident. Sansad TV's YouTube channel has 6.41 million subscribers and 63,763 videos. Officials said all the videos are saved on the Government's internal servers and were available despite the disruption. But the same videos, saved on Google’s servers, could be accessed when the channel was blocked. Sansad TV said in the statement that its YouTube channel “got compromised due to unauthorized activities by some scamsters on February 15, 2022 (Tuesday 01:00 am) including live streaming on this Channel. Also, the Channel name has been changed to ‘Ethereum’ by the attacker”. It said that its “Social Media Team promptly worked on it and got the Sansad TV Channel restored by early morning at around 0345 hours”. The issue was also alerted to the country's cyber security watchdog, Sansad TV said. “Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), the nodal agency for responding to cyber security incidents in India, has also reported the above incident and alerted Sansad TV.However, later on, YouTube has started fixing the security threats permanently.,” it said. Launched in September, Sansad TV was created after amalgamating Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV, which were run by the respective Houses. The channel, apart from live broadcast of Parliamentary proceedings, also carries news bulletins, shows about different aspects of Indian polity, interviews, etc. On Tuesday, before being restored, the YouTube account displayed a message that it had been “terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines”. A few hours later, the account showed a 404 error, with a message that read: “This page isn't available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.” YouTube's community guidelines outline “what type of content isn’t allowed” on the platform, and apply to videos, comments, as well as links and thumbnails. Spam and deceptive practices, sensitive content, fake engagement, child safety, impersonation, nudity and sexual content, suicide and self-injury, and vulgar language are the main reasons for which YouTube suspends the playback of a video or terminates an account. The platform says it enforces these guidelines equally for everyone by “using a combination of human reviewers and machine learning”. (With Manoj C G)
