Even the genius behind Facebook apparently gets hacked, too.
A group that calls itself OurMine has reportedly gained access to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest accounts this weekend.
According to VentureBeat, OurMine says the hack to Zuckerberg's account was made possible thanks to the LinkedIn password leak from a few weeks back.
In late May, millions of user account details from LinkedIn were allegedly dumped online, forcing the company to invalidate credentials and communicate with affected members to change their passwords.
Hackers posted a tweet on Zuckerberg's Twitter account, which had not been active since 2012.
Ouch. Mark Zuckerberg's social media accounts have been hacked pic.twitter.com/KvVmXOIg5s
— Ben Hall (@Ben_Hall) June 5, 2016
"Hey @finkd, we got access to your Twitter & Instagram & Pinterest,we are just testing your security , please dm us," the hackers said.
But Zuckerberg, the genius that he is, managed to send a reply, telling the hackers, "No you didn't. Go away, skids." Clearly he was not unnerved.
Twitter reacted quickly to the hack, temporarily suspending Zuckerberg's finkd account, VentureBeat said, and then bringing it back. Twitter has also deleted the offending tweet from the hackers.
Meanwhile, although it took a while, Pinterest has also managed to fix the vandalism.
Despite the hackers' claim, Zuckerberg's account on Instagram was not affected and is still intact. His account on Google+ was not breached, too.
Additionally, a spokesperson for Facebook said that no Facebook accounts or systems were accessed by the intruders.
"The affected accounts have been re-secured," the spokesperson said.
According to Engadget, Zuckerberg is now aware that even abandoned and seldom used accounts are still targets for hackers especially if there's a big name attached.
Although there is no link, the incident is also similar to what happened to Katy Perry's Twitter account, in which intruders sent racist and homophobic slurs to the singer's 89 million followers. The pop star has the largest number of followers on the social media site.
The recent hack on Zuckerberg's account is a great reminder that if you have a LinkedIn account, you should change your password immediately and tighten your security. You should also do the same in your other social media accounts just to make sure.
Experts say it should be an online habit to regularly change passwords. But if this is too tedious, the least one could do is make the passwords different for each online account.
Photo: Robert Scoble | Flickr
