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From the website of the news site "Atlanta Black Star" the videos were still integrated after hours
Photo: atlantablackstar.com
Porn videos suddenly appeared on the websites of renowned media such as the Washington Post and New York Magazine on Thursday.
As the IT magazine »Motherboard« first reported, the old video service Vidme is behind the breakdown.
The videos were first noticed by Twitter users. On actually reputable news portals, they came across a large black box in which a number of porn videos were available. However, these videos could only be found in old articles that are unlikely to find readers today. The reason was quickly found: The editors had included videos from the Vidme platform, which has been closed since the end of 2017, in the corresponding articles. A porn portal called 5 Star Porn HD had apparently taken over a domain from Vidme and used it to display its own content.
The big media reacted quickly to the takeover and removed the boxes from their offer.
How many other pages the porn boxes are integrated or linked on is currently unclear.
The trick is by no means new: dubious businessmen or even criminals manage to take over old domains or entire software projects, especially to play dodgy advertisements or even distribute malware.
tmk