OurMine, the hacking group that took credit for breaking into the social media accounts of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, apparently has a new target: News sites.
Image: Imgur
On Tuesday night, users began to notice that TechCrunch was the latest victim of an OurMine breach. Judging by the screenshots, the hackers posted a message under the byline of writer Devin Coldewey that appeared on the homepage, as well as banner messages.
OurMine hacking group claims TechCrunch hack — so far, a dead page and a front-page link. pic.twitter.com/mVq7dYerXx
— Zack Whittaker (@zackwhittaker) July 26, 2016
Techcrunch just got hacked by Ourmine, but no worries they say! #techcrunch #hacked #security #hack pic.twitter.com/pzdlFpJutH
— Tamas Norbi (@TamasNorbi) July 26, 2016
“OurMine Team — Important Message!” the headline read. “Hello guys it’s OurMine Team, we are just testing TechCrunch Security, don’t worry we never change your passwords … please contact us,” the group wrote in its post, which also included a link to its webpage.
The link to the post is now dead, and TechCrunch’s homepage has been scrubbed of any signs of the (admittedly small) breach. But a cached version still exists, as does a Google News result:
OurMine has taken credit for a number of hacks in recent weeks — besides the aforementioned tech giants, it’s also apparently gone after celebrities and Pokemon GO.
TechCrunch doesn’t appear to have publicly addressed the hack, but Engadget, who’s also owned by TechCrunch’s parent company AOL, had this to say:
Because of the limited nature of the “hack,” TechCrunch was able to quickly roll back the changes OurMine made to its site. The erroneous post was deleted within minutes, and the banners and other accoutrements added to its homepage were removed soon after. While TechCrunch says it’s still looking into exactly what happened, it seems the situation is under control for now.
We reached out to editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino and Devin Coldewey, but had not heard back at time of writing.