Kuaishou shares drop amid hacking ‘porn attack’ while app downloads soar
On December 23, shares of Kuaishou Technology dropped 6% during trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and closed down 3.5%. Simultaneously, the company’s app surged from 46th to 2nd place in the Chinese Apple Store downloads ranking. On the evening of December 22, the video platform faced a large-scale cyberattack that flooded its live streaming sections with a significant amount of explicit pornographic content.
Source Сaixinglobal
Following the attack, the company completely shut down its live streaming services around 23:30, restoring them by 2:00 on December 23. Kuaishou reported the incident to regulatory authorities and the police. Cybersecurity experts indicate the attackers used automated tools and bot accounts to distribute dozens of explicit content posts across the platform.
This incident exposes vulnerabilities in the platform’s moderation system and may affect user trust going forward, though the spike in app downloads suggests potential for a rebound in popularity.
