The hacking group OurMine has carried out yet another cyberattack again, and its latest victim is the well-known publication Variety.
This time around, the incident is a little special, as not only is the entertainment outlet the target but its readers too, where the hackers bombarded their emails with spam.
Lovely. Looks like @Variety was hacked and now they are sending tons of emails over and over... pic.twitter.com/5dJ43Z2ZuV
— Gerry D (@GerryDales) September 3, 2016
In light of the news, Variety responded soon after, telling everyone to just ignore and delete the unsanctioned messages.
Our team is working to resolve the unauthorized communications sent from @variety. Please ignore/delete them. — Variety (@Variety) September 3, 2016
For a little background, OurMine isn't out to steal data or take down websites. According to the group and based on the unsolicited emails, its purpose is to make bigwigs in the industry aware of their security flaws by hacking them.
"In contrast to many other hackers, OurMine doesn't typically attempt to shut down websites or abscond with data; the anonymous group positions itself as cybersecurity outfit that raises awareness for its services by hacking into prominent people and brands," Variety says.
On that note, it only took the email lists of Variety and sent spam that addressed the news outlet, telling it that it's just testing its security. The messages continued to provide a link to the organization's website at ourmine.org and a video, which has been removed now at the time of this writing.
Other notable targets of OurMine that got hacked this year include the social media accounts of a few big names in the tech world. That list consists of the Quora account of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the Twitter account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and, last but not least, the Twitter and Pinterest accounts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
It also claimed that it was behind the multiple distributed denial of service or DDoS attacks on the servers of one of the most popular mobile games Pokémon GO back in July, saying at the time that it won't stop until Nintendo or Niantic contacted them.
Long story short, it's probably safe for subscribers not to panic, but for good measure, there's no harm in changing their passwords.
Are you one of the victims who received an unauthorized email from Variety? If so, drop by our comments section below. Also, feel free to let us know what you think of OurMine's actions, whether it's justified or not.
