Burger King Twitter Account Compromised

The Burger King slogan to “Have it Your Way” probably was not meant as an invitation for hackers, but apparently there are those who disagree.

Earlier today, Burger King’s Twitter account was compromised to promote McDonald’s, one of its chief rivals in the fast food business. Burger King did not respond to a request for comment by SecurityWeek about the incident before publication.

However, the compromised account was made to feature a picture of McDonald’s ‘fish mcbites’ as well as a message starting that Burger King “just got sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped =[ FREDOM IS FAILURE℠.”

The account also pointed to a fake press release that seems to have been placed on Burger King’s official website. 

In response to the incident, McDonald’s issued a tweet denying responsibility.

“We empathize with our @burgerking counterparts,” the tweet reads. “Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”

The compromise of the Burger King account follows revelations this month that Twitter had been compromised by hackers and forced to reset the passwords of 250,000 of its users. In the aftermath of that incident, Bob Lord, director of information security at Twitter, warned users not to use weak passwords to protect their accounts.

“Make sure you use a strong password – at least 10 (but more is better) characters and a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols – that you are not using for any other accounts or sites,” he blogged. “Using the same password for multiple online accounts significantly increases your odds of being compromised.”