Cyber Incident Victim: Kuaishou
Date:
Dec 2025
Location:
China
Summary
Kuaishou experienced acyberattack that injected thousands of pornographic and violent videos into its livestreaming service for roughly 90 minutes, shocking hundreds of millions of users. The attack, described by a cybersecurity firm as AI‑driven and powered by 17,000 bot accounts, bypassed security controls and led the company to report the incident to police while its Hong Kong‑listed shares fell about 6%. Authorities noted the rise in automated attacks and the platform said operations gradually returned to normal.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 1 motive | 2 techniques |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
Around 10 p.m. on Monday, Kuaishou’s livestreaming service was inundated with thousands of pornographic and violent videos, a disruption that lasted approximately ninety minutes and shocked hundreds of millions of users across China. Users took to Weibo to express outrage, describing the feed as nothing but porn and saying their eyes felt like they would go blind. The Beijing‑based company issued a Tuesday statement attributing the incident to “underground and gray industries,” confirming that it had reported the attack to the police and noting that its app had gradually resumed normal operations. The cyberattack caused Kuaishou’s Hong Kong‑listed shares to fall as much as six percent on Tuesday.
Kuaishou, China’s second‑largest short‑video platform with more than 416 million daily active users according to its third‑quarter report, said the attack was powered by artificial intelligence, a claim echoed by state‑run China Daily which cited cybersecurity firm QAX. According to that report, the perpetrator bypassed security systems, compromised user data, and deployed approximately 17,000 bot accounts to stream the prohibited content, effectively paralyzing the livestreaming service. A QAX cybersecurity expert, Wang Liejun, told state media that the scale of the damage stemmed from automated attacks, noting that many platforms still rely on traditional manual defense models that cannot keep pace with bulk account registration and bot‑network control used by hackers to spread obscene material within seconds.
The incident occurred amid China’s broader cybersecurity environment, where the Cyberspace Administration of China reported an average of more than 3.49 million malware transmission attempts per day and announced new September rules requiring platforms to promptly and详细报告 security breaches to authorities. At the same time, a controversial law amendment debating tighter restrictions and higher fines for spreading obscene content was under discussion, though state broadcaster CCTV clarified that forwarding such photos to friends does not constitute a new crime, citing legal experts who noted the act was already technically illegal under the original law. Prominent commentator Hu Xijin repeatedly voiced opposition on Weibo to punishing private exchanges of sexual content, arguing that treating all suggestive material as something to be eradicated is not appropriate for grassroots social governance. No actor has claimed responsibility for the Kuaishou cyberattack as of the latest reports.