• The same hacking group took over social media accounts of the US NFL teams last month.
• The group claimed that its actions are only to manifest cyber vulnerabilities.

A notorious hacker group named OurMine took to Twitter to announce its feat of hacking Facebook’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. The hacker group made a post from the hacked Twitter account of Facebook. It is the same group that took over social media accounts of the US NFL teams last month.

What happened?

OurMine hacking collective hijacked the Twitter and Instagram accounts for Facebook and tweeted that “even Facebook is hackable”.

• The group’s post on Facebook’s Twitter account read, “Hi, we are OurMine. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security is better than Twitter.”
• It made a similar post via Facebook’s Messenger account as well.
• Hackers also posted a photo of OurMine’s logo on Instagram.

Aftermath of the incident

After around 30 minutes of tussle, accounts were restored.

• The group claimed that its actions are only to manifest cyber vulnerabilities.
• Twitter confirmed that the hacking occurred via a third-party platform Khoros, a marketing platform that businesses can use to manage their social media account.

“As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them,” Twitter said in a statement.

Previous OurMine incidents

OurMine has long been targeting accounts belonging to high-profile firms and figures.

• The Dubai-based hacking group had infiltrated the social media account of notabilities including Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey, Alphabet’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, and others.
• It was also behind the hack of corporate accounts of Netflix and ESPN.