In a bizarre video statement today, Brand New Tube CEO Muhammad Butt tried to link the recent hack of his video sharing website BrandNewTube.com (BNT) to a disclosure made after the hack. A reminder for readers – at some point this year, no later than 14 August 2022, Brand New Tube was hacked. The hackers posted a thread online on their website that day and then defaced Brand New Tube to redirect to it. The hack was allegedly done the same way as an earlier hack of BNT in 2020, using a vulnerability that had not been fixed, involving ‘nulled’ (pirate) software installed by BNT on its servers. It later emerged that a large number of user identity documents uploaded by BNT customers had been negligently published to the world at large for the past two years on Brand New Tube’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). Bizarrely, Butt’s statement sought to link the hack to a disclosure of VIP abuse made 11 days after the hack on 25 August 2022 – meaning a predator not only with powerful friends but the ability to time travel.

In his bizarre official statement today, Muhammad Butt, Brand New Tube CEO, looked far greyer than he did only two years ago. Picture used for the purposes of criticism of the video.

Earlier this week, Brand New Tube tweeted (archive) that the controversial and troubled site would be returning at 6pm today. It has not. Instead there was a bizarre statement by Muhammad Butt about, essentially, two things.

The first was an allegation that on 25 August 2022 Mr Butt received an allegation against a politician by a woman. Assuming that is true, (and it sounds disturbingly like Exaro News) that can have no bearing on the hack. The woman is said to claim she was abused by a man she feared had powerful friends. Even if true, it is unclear how the politician could find about this and then travel back in time to early August to arrange the hack of Brand New Tube. In short it is an irrelevant red herring.

The second remark was that Muhammad and Sonia had been libelled on blogs. It was also alleged that hackers had uploaded documents that Brand New Tube had never possessed. I do hope Muhammad is not denying that Brand New Tube negligently published driving licenses of customers on its CDN because the whistle-blower who contacted MHN had archives. MHN has provided those archive to the Office of the Information Commissioner. Perhaps Muhammad needs to think again.

There was no answer on the allegations of use of nulled software (pirate software illegally hacked to remove the copy protection), a sidelong allusion to passwords being compromised, and no answer to the allegation that Brand New Tube had been failing to fix security bugs it was notified of for two years – only vague allegations of death threats and blackmail – and an assertion police are involved. Of course, Sonia and Muhammad have often complained of death threats, but Sonia’s allegations have often seemed far less sinister under scrutiny. MHN challenges Sonia and Muhammad to publish the alleged threats so the public can make up their own mind.

The public are invited to remember the old saying that, “no answer is an answer”, and to never, ever, use Brand New Tube.