‘Sesame Street’ cleansed

Hackers replaced the kid show’s transmission with R-rated videos.

Hoping to see characters such as Big Bird, Kermit and Bert and Ernie, fans were in a surprise when they found that “Sesame Street” had been replaced by graphic scenes on October 16. The hackers also changed the Sesame Street channel profile to read, “Who doesn’t like porn, kids?”  reports thesun.co.uk

“Everyone loves it! I’m Mredxwx and my partner Mrsuicider91 are here to bring you nice content! Please don’t let ‘Sesame Street’ get this account back kids,” the website quoted the hacker as saying.

Walt Disney’s KGO-TV, an ABC affiliate in San Francisco, said that one of the R-rated films lasted eight minutes, but none of the videos of that kind included “Sesame Street” characters. The offensive content was available for about 20 minutes on the night of October 16 before the channel was suspended for “repeated or severe violations of community guidelines”, reports thesun.co.uk.

However, IANS reported that the “Sesame Street” channel on YouTube slowly got back to normal on October 17, after authorities regained control of the beloved children’s show. “We apologise for any inconvenience our audience may have experienced on our Sesame Street YouTube channel,” the company that produces the children’s show, Sesame Workshop, said in a statement quoted by IANS

“Our channel was compromised and we are presently working with YouTube and Google to restore our original content,” Sesame Workshop added. “We always strive to provide age-appropriate content for our viewers and hope to resolve this problem quickly.”

UK-based technology security expert Graham Cluley said, “Attacks like this prove websites with particularly vulnerable audiences need to be monitored and protected with the highest security controls.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19^th, 2011.