Hackers hijacked nearly half of the NFL’s Twitter accounts, and they’re still going
The social media accounts of several NFL teams and one belonging to the NFL were hacked, the NFL said in a statement today. Nearly half of the teams in the league had their Twitter accounts hacked on Sunday and Monday, and the hacker group OurMine has taken responsibility for the hacks, according to the BBC. Over the past hour, OurMine has apparently hacked Twitter accounts owned by ESPN and UFC, and may not be finished yet.
Many of the hacked tweets promoted OurMine, announcing that the hacking collective is “back” and that “everything is hackable.” NFL reporter Dov Kleiman collected many screenshots of the hacked pages in this Twitter thread.
The BBC reports that Facebook and Instagram accounts for some NFL teams were hacked as well.
In a statement to the BBC, Twitter said it locked the hacked accounts as soon as they were made aware of the issue. Most accounts appear to be fully restored. The @OurM1ne Twitter account listed in the tweets from the hacked accounts has also been suspended.
Here is the NFL’s full statement on the situation:
On Monday, the NFL Cybersecurity department became aware of a breach of a league-related social media account. Targeted breaches and additional failed attempts were discovered across the league and team accounts. The NFL took immediate action and directed the teams to secure their social media accounts and prevent further unauthorized access. Simultaneously, the league alerted the social media platform providers and, with their assistance, secured all league and club accounts. We continue to work diligently with the teams, which have resumed normal operations.
The NFL and teams are cooperating with its social media platform providers and law enforcement.
On Tuesday, OurMine also took responsibility for hacking some Twitter accounts owned by ESPN and UFC, though many of the tweets posting about OurMine appear to have been deleted already. CyberScoop editor-in-chief Greg Otto also says the group may have hacked ESPN-owned Facebook accounts as well, though we’re not seeing those posts up anymore, either.
In the past, OurMine has taken credit for hacking social media accounts owned by Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, and HBO, though there hasn’t been a reported hack by the group since 2017. Yesterday, a person who appears to be connected to OurMine told NBC News that OurMine stopped work in 2017 “due to some issues” and that the group is now back.
Update, January 28th, 4:24PM ET: Added information about potential hacks of accounts owned by ESPN and UFC.
The social media accounts of several NFL teams and one belonging to the NFL were hacked, the NFL said in a statement today. Nearly half of the teams in the league had their Twitter accounts hacked on Sunday and Monday, and the hacker group OurMine has taken responsibility for the…
