SAN FRANSISCO: A group of Saudi-based teenagers hacked social media accounts of the National Football League (NFL) and 15 of its teams, defacing them with messages.
The hackers’ group called OurMine defaced social media accounts of the NFL, the 49ers, Cardinals, Bears, Bills, Broncos, Browns, Bucs, Cowboys, Colts, Chiefs, Eagles, Giants, Packers, Texans, and Vikings, ZDNet reports.
To ensure maximum media mileage, the hacks have been timed to coincide with the busy Super Bowl week.
Most of the tweets posted by the OurMine hackers came from Khoros – a web service used by digital marketing and PR departments to manage social media accounts, and is connected to a social media account as a third-party app.
A Khoros spokesperson told ZDNet that “the Khoros platform was not compromised”.
Some of the accounts were hacked by removing the profile picture, Twitter header, Twitter name and, in a few cases, the Twitter bio.
Others included tweets claiming the hacking was carried out by OurMine.
OurMine has been involved in high-profile hacking in the past, including breaking into social media accounts of celebrities such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, to name a few.
The group has been active since 2016 and is believed to consist of several Saudi teenagers.
Almost half of the NFL team’s Twitter, Instagram accounts were targeted in the hacking.
“We are here to show people that everything is hackable. To improve your accounts security contact us,” read the message on most of the hacked platforms.
The hacks, which were confirmed by multiple sources to the tech website, are as under:
NFL (hijacked Twitter account)
Arizona Cardinals (Twitter account)
Buffalo Bills (Instagram and Facebook accounts)
Chicago Bears (Twitter account)
Cleveland Browns (Twitter account)
Dallas Cowboys (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts)
Denver Broncos (Twitter account)
Green Bay Packers (Twitter account)
Houston Texans (Twitter account)
Indianapolis Colts (Twitter account)
Kansas City Chiefs (Twitter account)
New York Giants (Twitter account)
Minnesota Vikings (Instagram account)
Philadelphia Eagles (Twitter account)
San Francisco 49ers (Twitter account)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Twitter account)
