UPDATED 05:30 EDT / JUNE 06 2016

NEWS

Monday blues for Mark Zuckerberg as his social media accounts get hacked

Even the Chief Executive Officer of the world’s largest social networking site, it seems, isn’t creative enough with his passwords. This morning Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter, Inc. and Pinterest, Inc. accounts were both hacked by a Saudi Arabia-based group known as OurMine. The group also claimed to have hacked his Instagram, Inc. account, but this has since been proven to be untrue.

His Twitter account, finkd, was suspended but it is now up again with the hacker’s brief hello now removed. Zuckerberg hasn’t tweeted since 2012, while his Pinterest account shows only three posts.

OurMine claims to have gotten access to Zuckerberg’s passwords via the LinkedIn Corp data breach, which involved a reported 117 million hacked emails and passwords later being sold by a Russian hacker going by the name of Peace.  It’s reported that the hacker was selling the email and password combinations on the dark web.

Engadget managed to get some screen shots before Zuckerberg’s account was suspended. The group tweeted, “We got access to your Twitter & Instagram & Pinterest, we are just testing your security, please dm us.” They also tweeted, “You were in Linkedin Database … DM for proof.”

mark-zuckerberg-twitter-hack

The news may serve as a reminder that reusing passwords is probably not a good idea, but seeing that one of the most commonly used passwords in the world is 123456 it’s likely that many people are still using the same passwords across various sites – including Mark Zuckerberg.

Furthermore, if you think you might be using a password that you used on MySpace back in the day, there should be cause for concern. Four hundred and twenty-seven million MySpace usernames and passwords were also recently hacked.

Zuckerberg is not alone, however, in being a celebrity face whose Twitter account has been breached of late. Rock star Keith Richards and TV personality Kylie Jenner, among other celebrities and musicians, also had their Twitter accounts compromised recently.

Photo credit: Andrew Feinberg via Flickr

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