#WeirdNews: Someone just hacked Facebook's official Instagram and Twitter accounts
What's the story
In what would certainly qualify as a weird news, hackers broke into the official accounts operated by Facebook on Twitter and Instagram. The attack took place a few hours ago by a group which goes by the name 'OurMine'. However, now, it seems like that the accounts have been recovered and are working properly. Here is more about the attack.
Twitter hack
Official Facebook and Messenger accounts hacked on Twitter
As reported by The Verge, the hackers took over the official accounts of Facebook and its Messenger app on Twitter and Instagram. In the Twitter-based attack, they used both of the compromised accounts to tweet out a message taking credit for the hack and saying that "Even Facebook is hackable but at least their security is better than Twitter."
Battle
Reposting battle with Facebook's social teams
The tweeted message, which even provided an OurMine email and website, was deleted and posted multiple times on the microblogging platform. Popular app reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong documented this battle, highlighting how quickly the hackers' tweets were being deleted by Facebook's social media teams but were again by posted by the threat actors.
Twitter Post
Here's a glimpse of the reposting battle
It was fun watching this battle between Facebook and hackers where hackers keep posting tweets and Facebook keeps deleting them pic.twitter.com/c7APEJn38I
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 8, 2020
Instagram hack
Instagram-based hack had no message
Separately, on Instagram, the main Facebook and Messenger accounts were compromised, but in this case, the hackers only posted a bunch of images highlighting their logo. Notably, both of the accounts on these platforms were recovered in less than 30 minutes from when the hackers, who also took credit for the hacks of NFL and ESPN accounts, first started showing their activity.
Questions
Many details still remain unclear
While the accounts have now started working normally, the question remains how exactly the hackers managed to break into them in the first place. Facebook and Instagram teams have not commented on the matter, but a Twitter spokesperson confirmed the hackers managed to tweet the messages using a third-party platform dubbed Khoros. And, apparently, it can post on Instagram too.