Supreme Court’s YouTube channel hacked, livestream promotes crypto

The Supreme Court of India’s YouTube channel has been hacked and stripped of the videos of its previous hearings. The channel’s name and image now say “Ripple”, reportedly after a US-based cryptocurrency firm, Ripple Labs.   

The channel is now showing videos promoting XRP, a cryptocurrency developed by Ripple Labs. At the time of writing this report, it was streaming a live video titled “Brad Garlinghouse: Ripple Responds To The SEC's $2 Billion Fine! XRP PRICE PREDICTION”. 

The top court has been using YouTube to stream hearings of cases listed before constitution benches and matters involving public interest. It had recently streamed the hearings of the RG Kar Hospital rape and murder case.

Several people on X said that the videos of the hearings have been made private after the hacking, while many others raised questions of cyber security.  

A Supreme Court official told Indian Express that the platform “appears to have been compromised” and it was detected on Friday morning. They said that the Supreme Court’s IT team has taken it up with the National Informatics Centre.

Notably, Ripple had earlier sued YouTube for failing to stop hackers from impersonating its CEO Brad Garlinghouse.