YouTube flooded in porn attack

YouTube, the video-sharing website, has been flooded with hundreds of porn videos in a deliberate attack.

The attack was claimed by members of the message-board website 4Chan who uploaded the explicit material under names of famous celebrity teenagers such as Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers.

Google, which owns YouTube, is aware of the attack and said that most of the videos have been removed, but said it may take some time for "video search results and thumbnail images to disappear from the site".

One 4Chan member said the attack was in response to YouTube's decision to remove many music videos from the site.

4Chan is a hugely popular site and has been behind the promotion of popular internet memes such as Rickrolling and lolcats.

Earlier this year 4Chan's 21-year-old founder was named Time magazine's most influential person of the year, in a poll that was allegedly rigged by 4Chan members.

A YouTube spokesperson said they were made aware of the violation through their flagging system.

"In addition, any account we discovered that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube was also disabled," the spokesperson added.