The tourism industry for many countries is so important that they have huge operations whose sole purpose is to encourage tourism to said country. Some are more successful than others.
The official YouTube channel of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), called Imagine Your Korea, is one of the more popular ones, with over 508,000 subscribers. Their videos, not surprisingly, focus on travel to Korea – different cities, attractions, hidden gems, etc. They’ll also mix things up a little, with their “Oddly Satisfying Sound” series of things you might hear in the country, Korean-made pop videos, and the like.
However it was completely out of the ordinary when Imagine Your Korea started showing a live broadcast about cryptocurrency this past Saturday. The live video, called SpaceX Invest, included an interview with American billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. At the time, about 5,000 people were watching the channel.
As it turned out, the official YouTube channels of the KTO, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the Korean government, all of which are run by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, had been targeted by a hacker or hackers. An official at Google Korea confirmed the hacking.
According to The Korea Times, an official at the ministry said they had become aware of the situation at 6 a.m. local time, took security measures and restored the account at 7:20 a.m. The channel had also been the victim of a hacking attempt earlier in the week.
The channel was temporarily taken off YouTube but restored on Sunday. The hacker(s) are still unknown.
The official also said the account’s ID and password were suspected to have been stolen. They added that they had strengthened the security on its channel to prevent another security breach and that they had notified YouTube and the police so that they could figure out how the account was hacked and avert a similar incident from occurring again.
But no, KTO is not recommending SpaceX or cryptocurrency. 😉
Feature Image: SpaceX
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