Vevo’s YouTube account appears to have fallen victim to hackers today, as a number of high-profile music videos have been defaced. The most-viewed YouTube video of all time, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito,” disappeared from YouTube briefly after being defaced by hackers.

The video’s image was altered and replaced with a masked gang holding guns (from Netflix show Casa de Papel), and the description was changed by hackers calling themselves Prosox and Kuroi’sh. Lots of other popular music videos have also defaced. 

YouTube is turning passive viewers into cryptocurrency miners, and Google isn't happy. The issue became apparent earlier in the week as complaints surfaced on social media claiming that YouTube ads were raising red flags in anti-virus software.

A service called Coinhive was hijacking a viewer's CPU and using its power to mine crypto. A Friday blog post from Trend Micro, an international cybersecurity company, confirmed the sharp uptick in Coinhive use earlier in the week, pinning it to a "malvertising campaign" that subverted a Google ad service used on YouTube. 

Cybercrime, like any other enterprise is a business, albeit an illegal one. Apart from targeting individuals, businesses and governments, cybercriminals also cash in by creating, using and marketing malware to other crooks. It appears however, that the age old adage of "honour among thieves" does not apply to cybercriminals these days.

Security researchers have uncovered cybercrooks advertising and distributing phishing kits, that come with how-to videos and links to additional information, to wannabe hackers via YouTube. The catch however is that the advertised kits come with a secret backdoor that sends all the phished data back to the author.

Researchers have shed light on a worrying loophole that could be used by hackers to take control of your smartphone using its built-in voice recognition software. By burying mangled voice commands within YouTube videos, a team of experts found that they could instruct a nearby device to carry out potentially harmful actions.

Voice interfaces have become a common feature on modern smartphones, allowing us an extra level of convenience in diary planning, hands-free messaging or just settling pub debates on pointless trivia. Yet while the likes of Siri, Cortana and Google Now have made our smartphones smarter, they have also unwittingly added a whole new level of vulnerability.

YouTube is getting ready to start selling tickets. Google’s video site appears to be finalizing launch plans for its long-in-the-making subscription service, and industry sources say they’ve been told to expect a launch near the end of October.

A blast email from YouTube to content owners who share ad revenue with the site, telling them they have to agree to new terms by Oct. 22 or their “videos will no longer be available for public display or monetization in the United States,” helps support that timeline. But YouTube, which floated the idea of a new subscription service nearly a year ago, has never publicly committed to a timeline.

YouTube may be blocked by Russian internet providers starting late July. The Russian media supervision service Roskomnadzor added some videos posted there to its list of banned webpages due to copyright infringement.

YouTube might be banned for illegally posting several Russian TV series owned by the Russian TNT-network company. Russian authorities also warned internet users that adding particular YouTube page indexes to the ban list may lead to the blocking of the whole website by some ISPs making it impossible for their clients to access the site. Roskomnadzor has repeatedly provided notifications demanding YouTube delete the illegal content. However, the video is still available.

The unmanaged personal computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets that make up almost one-third of the mobile BYOD used to access corporate data, combined with lack of controls, leave organizations vulnerable to data exposure.

The survey confirms that despite most organizations’ lack of readiness to support a mobile workforce, the number of mobile employees using BYOD is still growing. With so little insight into their own networks, and with their jobs on the line, it is unsurprising that almost one third of respondents still do not provide access to corporate data through a cloud application or service.

A coalition of consumer and children security advocacy groups plans to urge federal regulators to investigate a YouTube video app aimed at children that the groups say disregards long-established safeguards limiting advertising to young audiences. 

The YouTube Kids app blends video programming and ads in ways that deceive children and parents, according to the groups. A letter will be sent to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday asking it to examine whether the app violates rules prohibiting unfair and deceptive marketing practices. Google Inc-owned YouTube is the world's most popular video website. 

A lot of large companies aren't taking the right precautions to secure the mobile apps they build for customers.

A new study found organizations are poorly protecting their corporate and BYOD mobile devices against cyber-attacks – opening the door for hackers to easily access user, corporate and customer data. The number of mobile cyber-security attacks is continuing to grow. At any given time, malicious code is infecting mobile devices. Building security into mobile apps is not top of mind for companies, giving hackers the opportunity to easily reverse engineer apps.

The web search giant has been recruiting moderators around the globe in order to help prevent YouTube from being hi-jacked for propaganda by militants. The search giant will not disclose the number of new staff. To deal with the problem it has Arabic speakers in every time zone now.

The 22-minute film of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh being burned alive was first uploaded to YouTube, where it remained for a number of hours before moderators removed it. However, by that time, images were already being circulated on Twitter messenger. The tactic has had a major effect in helping Islamic State to radicalise new followers.