Hotstar, India’s Most Popular Streaming Service Drops Support for Safari

BY Smidh

Published 9 Jun 2019

Hotstar logo

Hotstar, one of the most popular streaming services in India, has disabled support for Safari after it discovered a security flaw that allowed unauthorized use of its platform and gave one access to its premium content catalog. Hotstar initially blamed dropping support for Safari as “technical limitations” on the browser’s part.

A report from TechCrunch, however, paints a different story. Safari support for Hotstar was pulled after engineers at the company discovered a flaw that was being used for unauthorized access to the streaming service platform and its premium content. The flaw could be exploited through both Safari on the desktop and on iOS devices.

Sources at Hotstar told TechCrunch that this was not an accurate description of the event. Instead, company’s engineers had identified a security hole that was being exploited by unauthorized users to access and distribute Hotstar’s content — including the premium catalog.

Hotstar engineers are working on fixing the flaw and supporting Safari once again.

The exploit has been discovered by the Hotstar’s engineering team just as the ICC World Cup 2019 began. With Hotstar the official streaming partner of the event in India, millions of viewers are going to take tune into the streaming platform to watch the action. During the IPL 2019 finale, over 18.6 million concurrent viewers tuned into Hotstar’s live stream — a world record for any OTT service across the world.

Update: The issue has now been resolved and Hotstar streaming once again works in Safari.

Read: How to Watch ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 Live on iPhone and iPad

[Via TechCrunch]