Ecuador President Says Twitter Account Hacked

QUITO – Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has said his Twitter account was hacked, blaming right-wing foreign groups for posting false tweets in his name.

The messages were removed several minutes after being posted on his account, @MashiRafael, he wrote late Thursday on his microblogging site.

“A few hours ago my Twitter was hacked, and they sent false tw (tweets) with the usual outrages,” he said.

One of the messages featured a link to an Anonymous Ecuador webpage on which were posted emails allegedly intercepted from government officials that related to security and intelligence matters.

Ecuador’s Interior Ministry and the National Intelligence Secretariat issued a statement denouncing the hack as “an attack on internal security” as well as on Correa’s privacy, saying it would not be tolerated.

Correa, who last year complained his email was being spied on, said he had to change passwords to his account.

“Apparently the attacks are by the extreme right of certain foreign countries, in complicity with unscrupulous national opponents,” he said.

Correa is an active user of Twitter with nearly 1.5 million followers.