San Francisco: Hackers on Saturday broke into Twitter Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Dorsey’s account and posted a flurry of rogue tweets, including racial slurs.
The micro-blogging platform later said that it secured Dorsey’s account which became victim of ‘SIM swapping’ or ‘SIM jacking’ where a mobile number is transferred to a new SIM card.
By taking control of Dorsey’s number, hackers posted tweets via text messages on his Twitter account.
A hacker group called ‘Chuckling Squad’ claimed that it was behind the cyber attack on Dorsey’s Twitter account which has over 4 million followers.
“The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider,” Twitter said in a statement.
“This allowed an unauthorised person to compose and send tweets via text messages from the phone number,” the company dded.
According to TechCrunch, one of the tweets posted a Twitter handle of someone who purported to take credit for the account takeover. That account was immediately suspended.
“We’re aware that @jack was compromised and we are investigating what happened,” said Twitter spokesperson Ebony Turner.
Published on: Aug 31, 2019 at 10:50 IST
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