You probably already saw that some of Mark Zuckerberg’s social channels didn’t have the best weekend, but it seems he wasn’t the only one to get hacked. The recent LinkedIn breach seems to be the most obvious culprit, as the sheer number of Twitter hacks in such a short time is definitely odd.
UPDATE (6/6/2016 12:20ET): LinkedIn reached out to direct our attention to an update to their own blog post related to the hack. The update is included in its entirety below:
UPDATE: June 6, 8:30 a.m. PT
Recent reports of celebrity accounts being compromised on social media have resulted in questions about connections to the 2012 LinkedIn data breach. Here are the facts as we know them and as it relates to this most recent incident:
– There is no new data breach. Several weeks ago, additional names and passwords from the original data breach in 2012 were released and we took quick action to notify our members.
– At that time, we inactivated all the passwords on LinkedIn for members that hadn’t updated them since the 2012 incident and reached out to every member to let them know what had happened, reminding them to reset their passwords on other sites.
– All members should take care to manage and change passwords across other sites, avoid re-use, leverage advanced security features and update often.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
In addition to Zuck’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts getting taken over, someone(s) also took the accounts of Keith Richards, Tenacious D, Katy Perry, Kylie Jenner, and even the late Jackass star, Ryan Dunn for a spin over the weekend. In the instance of Tenacious D, hackers tweeted that the band’s front man, actor Jack Black, had died. Upon regaining control of their account, they tweeted that it was untrue, and a sick prank.
WE had our Twitter account hacked. We can assure you that Jack is ALIVE and WELL and that this was a sick “prank”.
— Tenacious D (@RealTenaciousD) June 5, 2016
In the case of Keith Richards, the hackers just seemed to send out what the account referred to as “hateful tweets.” Those tweets have since been removed
Earlier today Keith’s Twitter account was hacked along with other verified accounts. The hateful tweets that were posted have been removed.
— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) June 5, 2016
In fact, it seems that all evidence of any compromised account has since been cleaned up. An important takeaway from this whole experience though is that it seems that celebrities aren’t using strong, diverse passwords on their social media accounts either.
Take this as your periodic reminder to change your passwords for your social accounts. Use strong passwords, and two-factor authentication whenever possible. And please, please don’t use the same password on multiple sites — there are plenty of password managers available that will help you store, and even generate passwords for the sites that you visit. Take advantage of these tools before someone uses your weak passwords to take advantage of you.
[button link=”http://www.pcmag.com/news/345002/more-celeb-twitter-accounts-hacked-after-linkedin-data-dump” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: PC Mag[/button]
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