Reuters/Twitter
Hackers have taken over Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account, and tweeted and retweeted offensive and racist content.
The incident happened earlier today. The tweets and retweets have been since removed after the Twitter’s CEO name started trending on the site.
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the hack, but did not offer any other details.
“Yes, Jack’s account was compromised,” said Brandon Borrman, Vice President Global Communications at Twitter. “We’re working on it and investigating what happened.”
Yes, Jack’s account was compromised. We’re working on it and investigating what happened.
— Brandon Borrman (@bborrman) August 30, 2019
The offensive (re)tweets were present on Dorsey’s profile page for around 30 minutes. A group calling itself the Chuckle Gang took credit for the incident, although, it’s unclear who are its members, at this point in time.
In one tweet authored under Dorsey’s name, the hackers also made a bomb threat, claiming there was a bomb planted at Twitter’s headquarters. While the tweet was removed and wasn’t taken seriously, this might trigger a federal investigation under US law.
.@Jack’s account has been hacked.
The Tweets are coming from a source called Cloudhopper. Cloudhopper was the name of the company Twitter acquired a long time ago to help bolster their SMS service.
Looks like the hackers are Tweeting via the old SMS service… pic.twitter.com/YcU3DTn9wS
— Sam (@Hooray) August 30, 2019
A Twitter user also pointed out that the source of all the unauthorized tweets was CloudHopper, a company Twitter acquired in 2010. CloudHopper allows users to send out tweets using SMS messages. It’s unclear if hackers breached the old CloudHopper infrastructure, or if they SIM swapped Dorsey’s real phone number to interact with his account via SMS.
Credit: Zdnet
