14 DAY TRIAL // A BBC Twitter account was hacked earlier today to post a message that took many by surprise: “Breaking News: President Trump is injured in arm by gunfire #Inauguration.”
The tweet was removed shortly after it was published, with the news corporation revealing that the false breaking news was posted by hackers who managed to get control of the account. The message was retweeted, BBC admitted in an article today.
“We are investigating and taking steps to ensure this does not happen again,” the company said, revealing that it still doesn’t know who was behind the attack.
OurMine: We didn’t do it
Hacking group OurMine itself got control of the hacked BBC Northampton account and tweeted a message that revealed the breach. “Message from OurMine: we detected unusual activity on this account, the account was hacked by someone and we are trying to fix the issue now,” OurMine tweeted shortly after the Trump message went live.
But according to a report from BBC, which contacted OurMine after the breach, the US hacking group isn’t responsible for the Trump shooting message.
"We didn't hack it at the first time. We saw unusual activity on the account and we re-hacked it to make sure if the account was hacked or not, and unfortunately it was hacked. We just tweeted that someone hacked it. We never hack anyone for no reason. We are a security group,” OurMine said.
OurMine managed to breach several high-profile Twitter accounts in the past, including those of Netflix, Marvel, and others, but the group never attempted to spread false news or malware, but only to reveal the weak security practices of their victims.
Until now, no other group or hacker claimed the attack, and the BBC says it already restored access to its account. The tweets were removed and the news corporation explains that it’s still looking into how the breach took place.