Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's Twitter account compromised

tech2 News StaffJun 20, 2016 09:00:08 IST

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's Twitter account was compromised with Tweets from the hacking group OurMine appearing in Costolo's feed. OurMine is the same group that had hacked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest accounts. The account was not directly hacked, instead a third party service that cross posted to Costolo's Twitter account was compromised, and the attackers used this old service to post to Costolo's feed, according to a report in ReCode.

https://twitter.com/dickc/status/744607854988955649

Costolo was able to retake his account. The tweets were deleted and the Twitter account belonging to OurMine has also been suspended. The Saudi Arabia-based hacking group OurMine claims to be on a mission to teach people to secure their accounts better.

The group has compromised social media accounts of a number of high profile targets. The Mark Zuckerberg hack revealed that Zuckerberg's Pinterest password was dadada.  Apart from Zuckerberg, OurMine had taken over EDM artist David Guetta's Twitter account. OurMine had also hacked the Twitter account of another Twitter co-founder and former CEO, Evan Williams.

After the attack OurMine post tweets requesting for a DM contact, and advises readers not to worry, the tweet is just a security check. The Williams hack used an attack similar to the Costolo attack, a third party service that cross posted to Twitter was compromised. For Costolo, the service is unknown, for Williams it was Foursquare.