The short-video platform’s services experienced disruption on Monday night following a cyberattack attributed to ‘black and grey industries’.
Short-video platform Kuaishou Technologyreported a significant cyberattack to the authorities following an incident on Monday night that enabled explicit material to overwhelm popular live streams for over an hour.
KuaishouLive-streaming services experienced disruption around 10pm as suggested content was flooded with explicit material, as reported by news site Sina. In certain affected rooms, viewership exceeded 50,000 before the platform took immediate action.
By 11:30 PM, Kuaishou started removing a large number of videos and shut down its live-streaming channels, as reported by Sina, which noted that services began to slowly come back online at 2 AM on Tuesday.
Are you curious about the most significant issues and developments happening globally? Find the solutions withSCMP Knowledge, our latest platform offering carefully selected content including explainers, FAQs, analyses, and infographics, presented by our acclaimed team.
Kuaishou stated on Tuesday that the cyberattack was conducted by “black and grey industries” – an underground network of illicit and legally unclear operations, including cybercrime and bot-facilitated fraud.
The organization has submitted an official report to the police and informed the relevant regulatory authorities. Kuaishou did not provide a response to a request for statement.
“A breach on Kuaishou acts as a threefold alert,” stated William Wei, vice-president and chief operations officer at the Chinese cybersecurity company WebRAY. Wei mentionedcybersecurity had evolvedinto a “vital force” and influenced a company’s future success. Hacker intentions had changed from seeking money to causing harm, he mentioned.
“Kuaishou clearly is missing fundamental threat intelligence and detection systems to safeguard its main live-streaming platforms,” stated David Ip, founder chairman of the Hong Kong China Cybersecurity Association.
Massive-scale account compromises have become much simpler due to artificial intelligence and existing tools, Ip stated, noting that Kuaishou needs to perform a thorough review of its security measures across infrastructure, applications, and data.
“Other similar events occurred in South Korea, where Coupang’s CEO stepped down,” Ip mentioned. The chief executive of the e-commerce company Coupang, Park Dae-jun, resigned this month after a significant data leak exposed the personal details of millions of customers.
Kuaishou showcased its application of artificial intelligence and large-scale data analysis in disrupting activities conducted by “black and grey industries” within its 2024 Community Management Report. The platform supported law enforcement in 32 criminal investigations last year, resulting in the arrest of approximately 250 individuals.
With more than 120 internally developed anti-fraud models, the platform blocked 96.5 percent of fraud attempts in 2024, according to the report, as it issued almost 140 million alerts.
Kuaishou’s security protocols also resulted in the blocking of 2.6 million harmful devices and the daily elimination of approximately 225,000 bot accounts, according to the report. The initiative also involved the deletion of over 100,000 videos associated with “water armies” – which inundate social media with fabricated reviews – along with more than a million restricted comments.
The Kuaishou app’s average daily active users (DAUs) hit 416 million during the third quarter, positioning it as China’s second-largest short-video platform following ByteDance’s Douyin, which boasts over 600 million DAUs. The company’s revenue for the third quarter amounted to 35.6 billion yuan (US$5 billion), reflecting a 14.2 per cent rise compared to the previous year, while adjusted net profit increased by 26.3 per cent to 5 billion yuan. The company’s stock dropped by as much as 6 per cent during Tuesday’s trading session.
More Articles from SCMP
China’s significant trade surplus may lead to protective measures in 2026, according to a report.
This piece was first published in the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), a top news outlet covering China and Asia.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
jasdooit 
Leave a comment