A group of hackers called OurMine hijacked some of Facebook’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts over the weekend through a third-party social media management service.
The hackers briefly hijacked the Twitter accounts of Facebook and its Messenger application, and the Instagram accounts of Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
The hackers used the hijacked accounts to promote their “security services.” The group has offered to help individuals and companies protect their social media and email accounts.
They claim to be an “elite” group of white hat hackers. “We have no bad intentions and only care about the security and privacy of your accounts and network,” they wrote on their website.
The messages posted by the hackers over the weekend on Facebook’s accounts were removed within minutes.
“Some of our corporate social accounts were briefly hacked but we have secured and restored access,” Facebook wrote on Twitter.
OurMine managed to hack the social media accounts of many high-profile individuals and organizations in the past years, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and PlayStation. One of their most recent operations targeted the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts of over a dozen NFL teams.
The hackers posted messages on behalf of the NFL teams via Khoros, a popular customer engagement platform that includes social media management and online community tools. Khoros was also abused in the attack aimed at Facebook.
Just hours after OurMine took control of Facebook’s social media accounts, Khoros informed customers that it had temporarily suspended some services “due to a phishing attack that allowed a bad actor access to our platform.” The company expects to restore services within a few days after it executes its “security protocols.”
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