In shocking news, several prominent Twitter accounts that included celebrities and businesses, have been hacked and are now used for spamming. There have been several instances in the past when Twitter accounts have suffered a similar fate.
Some of the celebrities and companies hacked include:
Xbox
PlayStation
Sky News
New Yorker magazine
XFactor
Charlie Sheen
Lionel Messi
The economist
Shahzam
ICRC
Governor Mark Dayton
Despite the news that several of the accounts, including those specified above, have been hacked, there is no concrete details available regarding this attack, including who has perpetrated this attack and the reason behind it. What is known is that these accounts have millions of followers, hence, hacking them gives the attacker an opportunity to increase their reach with minimum efforts.
The websites that are commonly being shared as a part of these spam tweets included:
www.freeadd.me
www.myfollowers.me
www.more-followers.me
This may mean that there are individuals or an obscure group trying to take advantage of the large follower lists of these Twitter accounts to promote their websites. However, a look at these accounts does reveal that these tweets have been removed. It seems that after complaints, Twitter removed these tweets and restored the accounts to their original account holders.
This article (Several Prominent Twitter Accounts Hacked) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
Supporting Anonymous’ Independent & Investigative News is important to us. Please, follow us on Twitter: Follow @AnonymousNewsHQ
Lionel Messi doesn’t have a twitter account.