Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks about the new Facebook News feature at the Paley Centre For Media on October 25, 2019 in New York City. (Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty)Facebook’s twitter account was temporarily taken over by a group of hackers long believed to be Saudi teenagers.
Hacking crew OurMine, which only last month hijacked the accounts of 15 NFL football teams, and has previously taken over Mark Zuckerberg’s Pinterest and Twitter accounts, appears to have momentarily seized control of @Facebook and @Messenger on Twitter, both of which are verified Facebook-owned accounts.
As with the NFL accounts, the hackers—whose methods are relatively unsophisticated—appear to have seized control of @Facebook through Khoros, a third-party social media platform primarily used by digital marking and public relations firms. (Facebook’s social media manager appears to normally use Twitter’s web app to control the account.)
The tweets declaring OurMine’s take over seemed to disappear within a couple of minutes.
OurMine is also known for having taken over the accounts of several news organisations, including CNN and the New York Times, as well as various Silicon Valley CEOs, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and even Twitter’s own Jack Dorsey.
For the record, enabling two-factor authentication (Settings > Account > Security) and disabling access from any third-party apps (Settings > Account > Apps and sessions) on Twitter is a surefire way to OurMine-proof your account.
