"Sesame Street" briefly became "Smutty Street" yesterday (Oct. 16) after pranksters hijacked the show's YouTube channel and replaced video clips of Muppets with hardcore live-action pornography.
The decidedly not-kid-friendly material was up for about 20 minutes before YouTube, which is owned by Google, took it down.
"We apologize for any inconvenience our audience may have experienced today on our Sesame Street YouTube channel," "Sesame Street" production company Sesame Workshop said in a statement last night, according to the Washington Post. "Our channel was compromised and we are presently working with YouTube/Google to restore our original content. We always strive to provide age-appropriate content for our viewers and hope to resolve this problem quickly."
The "Sesame Street" YouTube channel was offline this morning (Oct. 17).
The channel's profile was also changed, and a cryptic message posted: "WHO DOESN'T LOVE PORN KIDS? RIGHT! EVERYONE LOVES IT! IM MREDXWX AND MY PARTNER MRSUICIDER91 ARE HERE TO BRING YOU MANY NICE CONTENT! PLEASE DON'T LET SESAME STREET TO GET THIS ACCOUNT BACK KIDS :( PLEASE...LET ME AND MRSUICIDER91 HAVE IT AND WE GONNA MAKE ALL THE AMERICA HAPPY!"
However, YouTube user Mredxwx quickly put up his own brief, silent clip denying responsibility.
"I did not hack Sesame Street I am an honest youtuber I work hard to make quality gameplay videos AND MOST IMPORTANTLY I RESPECT THE COMMUNITY GUIDELINES," the text displayed on his clip read.
"Precisely how Sesame Street's YouTube channel got hacked is presently a mystery," remarked security expert Graham Cluley on Sophos' Naked Security blog, "but it's natural to assume that they were sloppy with their password security."