Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey isn’t safe from trolling hackers.
Just after 3:30 p.m. ET Friday afternoon, the billionaire tech guru’s account began posting racial slurs and other problematic content to his 4+ million followers. The group behind the attack announced itself as the “Chuckling Squad.”
“Some offensive tweets were up for about 10 minutes, though not long after the hack began, those tweets were being deleted,” The Verge reported Friday. “The hackers also plugged a Discord server, asking people to join it. (The server invitation link tweeted out by the hackers no longer works.)”
“We’re aware that @jack was compromised and investigating what happened,” Twitter Communications tweeted Friday afternoon, adding in a follow-up tweet about an hour later: “The account is now secure, and there is no indication that Twitter’s systems have been compromised.”
Tech Crunch reports that while details about how the account was hacked have not yet been confirmed, the tweets were sent via Cloudhopper, “a service Twitter bought in 2010 to improve its SMS service, suggesting Dorsey’s account may have been compromised by an authorized third-party app rather than obtaining Dorsey’s account password.”
“Both the server and the server owner were permanently removed from Discord within minutes of this being reported to us,” a representative from Discord told The Verge. “Encouraging any kind of hacking is in direct violation of our Terms of Service. We will continue to monitor and investigate this incident.”
The Verge says the group behind the hacking appears to be the same one that attacked some YouTube celebrities on Twitter last week. “At the time, many of the people who’d been affected suggested their accounts were breached following a SIM card swap conducted by AT&T employees,” the outlet notes. Asked for comment, AT&T said it’s working with law enforcment to address the issue and better secure accounts.
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