- Facebook’s Twitter account was briefly hijacked by the hacking collective OurMine on Friday afternoon.
- A back-and-forth tussle for control between the hacking collective and Facebook resulted in a series of rapidly posted-then-deleted tweets.
- OurMine has a history of hacking the social media accounts of high-profile individuals, teams and companies: it hacked the Twitter accounts of 15 NFL teams at the end of January.
- Twitter confirmed the hack to Business Insider, and said the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform.
Facebook’s Twitter account was briefly hijacked by the hacking collective OurMine on Friday afternoon, but the company still appeared to retain some control over the account.
“Hi, we are O u r M i n e. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter. to improve your accounts security Contact us: contact@o u r m i n e .org For security services visit: o u r m i n e. org,” a Friday afternoon tweet announcing the takeover said.
The Twitter account belonging to Facebook Messenger was similarly compromised at the same time.
But Facebook still appeared to have some control over the account, and deleted the tweet – posted at least five times – within seconds. Within 30 minutes, the hack appeared to stop.
Twitter confirmed the hack to Business Insider, and said the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform.
“As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them,” a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider. Facebook did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Security researcher Jane Manchung Wong was able to take a video of the tweets getting made and deleted in real-time:
The tweet styles the hacker collective claiming responsibility for the hack as a “security group” and directs users to the company website, which offers personal security checks of social media accounts, emails, iPhones and iCloud for $US30 – the pricetag for enterprise security checks is available upon request, it seems.
OurMine has long been targeting the social media accounts belonging to high-profile figures and companies.
The group hacked the Twitter accounts of 15 NFL teams at the end of January. In 2016, the group managed to hack the Twitter accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and even Twitter’s own CEO Jack Dorsey. OurMine even hacked Business Insider’s website during the same year.
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