Due To Security Flaw, Safari Users In India Are Blocked From Hotstar Video Streaming Service

Hotstar is considered as the largest service of video streaming in India with the number of users of over 300 million. Last Friday, this service stopped support for Safari – Apple’s web browser. According to two reliable sources telling TechCrunch, this action was said to lessen one security flaw allowing unauthorized usage.

Run by Star India which is owned by 20th Century Fox now belonging to Disney, Hotstar service is popular and attracts a large number of people watching its platform’s ICC World Cup cricket tournament. However, it is also the time of the incident.

When there are some complaints that it is impossible to access the service on Safari, “technical limitations” were asserted to be the bottleneck. According to its official support account on Friday evening, it is because of Safari’s limitations; therefore, they couldn't do much.

Nonetheless, it was not exact about the event, said TechCrunch’s information from some Hotstar’s sources. In fact, one security hole has been identified by the company’s engineers. It was said that unauthorized users exploited this hole to have access to and spread out Hotstar’s content, even it was premium catalog.

Hotstar has the intention of fixing the flaw as soon as possible and restore support for Apple’s web browser, claimed the source.

Through only Safari’s mobile browsers and desktop can the flaw be exploited. Therefore, it is recommended that users try Firefox, Chrome, and Hotstar mobile app instead of Safari. Hotstar gave no comments.

In spite of the issue, Hotstar beat Amazon Prime Video and Netflix to protect its No. 1 position in the market of video streaming in India. The result was shown by the statistic of engagement and user number. In May 2019, Hostar came to a determination of breaking the current global record and set a new one with a live cricket match’s over eighteen million viewers.