Today, Twitter accounts across the world, including Forbes, Amnesty International, BBC’s North American service, Justin Bieber – as well as many others – were compromised by supposed Turkish government supporters.
Twitter has since said that it has located and removed the source of the hacking attack.
>See also: Another day, another hack: Deutsche Telekom
A company spokesperson is quoted as saying that the source had been tracked to a third party app whose permissions had been removed.
The spokesperson provided no further details.
The hackers tweeted in Turkish words with the Turkish flag. Some of the words in these tweets read “see you on 16 April” – a reference to the Turkish referendum date – and “Nazi Germany, Nazi Holland”.
This ‘statement’ echoes the comments made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who – during a diplomatic row – compared German and Dutch officials to Nazis.
The row surrounded both countries banning Turkish ministers from taking part in public rallies in support of Erdogan.
>See also: Mark Zuckerberg falls victim to LinkedIn password hack
Commenting on this, Paul Fletcher, cybersecurity evangelist at Alert Logic, said “The practice of hacking Twitter accounts to gain notoriety for a cause is similar to a web defacement hack.”
“Hacking groups like the variety of audiences they can reach by hacking a varied array of Twitter accounts, like we see in this latest attack. Social media accounts should practice good password management practices to prevent being attacked.”
