Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest Accounts Hacked
Even Facebook’s very own CEO and Founder is not safe from cybercriminals. Mark Zuckerberg had his social network accounts briefly hacked by OurMine, who then boasted about the occurrence of the stolen accounts.
OurMine, who has over 40,000 followers on Twitter, claimed to have taken over Zuckerberg’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts over the weekend. Some of the accounts were defaced solely for the chance to brag about it. Engadget reported that it is not yet known if any other accounts were hacked by OurMine.
Twitter, on their part, took care of the situation quickly as they restored Zuckerberg’s account and suspended OurMine’s. OurMine, however, was able to deface Zuckerberg’s Pinterest account too.
OurMine stated that the LinkedIn security breach from 2012 was the main source of the Zuckerberg’s password. They noted that his password was an extremely simple “dadada” and that it was among the 100-million that was included in the hack. In mid-May, LinkedIn announced that the database of 117-million hacked accounts was posted online.
Aside from the LinkedIn fiasco, there was also a leak of 360-million account details for users of MySpace. A LeakedSource representative stated that since May, their website has accumulated up to a billion records on their database.
Mark Zuckerberg had his social network accounts briefly hacked by OurMine, who then boasted about the occurrence of the stolen accounts.
Stolen password might not be up-to-date, but this information is still able to help hackers who use them to break into other accounts. Their goal is to come across users who reuse their passwords across different accounts – like Zuckerberg.
“You have hundreds of millions of keys and you can try them on any major collection of locks you can find,” echoed Alex Holden, Hold Security LLC’s chief information security officer.
Liam O’Murchu, Symantec’s security response team director, said that the publicity of this ordeal might lead other hackers to take the same route in future attacks. Zuckerberg was lucky that the costs of the hacking were not severe since he really does not use Twitter.
Others were not as lucky as Zuckerberg. At least a hundred TeamViewer users have had their accounts hacked since the LinkedIn incident. TeamViewer is a type of software which allows users remote access to personal computers. It is also reported that the hacked accounts are being used to purchase through Amazon or PayPal.
A TeamViewer spokesman stated, “These cases of account abuse do not hinge on a TeamViewer vulnerability. They are the result of account and particularly password mismanagement.”
A study done by Researcher Gartner, Inc. showed that up to two-thirds of peoples reuse their passwords. Holden, on the other hand, thinks the LinkedIn breach presents an opportunity for cybercriminals since users are likely to reuse their LinkedIn passwords for other professional accounts. This could then lead to access to a user’s business data or take over job or travel site accounts.
Holden concluded, “I would be worried about this being available to a great many people. It looks like some of this data is already available publicly to many malicious individuals.”
“A number of other online services have seen millions of passwords stolen in the past several weeks. We recommend people use a unique, strong password for Twitter,” a spokesperson from Twitter said.
Pinterest reiterated the advice. “We recommend everyone use a strong and unique password that isn’t used on other sites,” their spokeswoman said.
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