The account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was hacked on Friday afternoon, reportedly sending racial and abusive tweets and retweets to over 4 million followers before Twitter secured the account.
Reportedly, a group called ‘Chuckling Squad’ claimed responsibility for the attack and the objectionable tweets from Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account. They posted racial slurs and content that was anti-Semitic in nature.
Further, the group also tweeted from Dorsey’s account stating that the Twitter headquarters had a secret bomb planted in its premises, sparking off alarms regarding the safety of the premises. One of the tweets from the hacked account said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was innocent, while others contained derogatory comments about black people and Jews.
According to reports, the supporting channel set up by the hackers to mock the hack was subsequently taken down, and the racially abusive tweets from Dorsey’s account were removed. According to Twitter, an official investigation has now been launched into the incident.
The micro-blogging site, co-founded by Dorsey, said the phone number associated with his account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider. Dorsey’s account was restored within an hour and all the controversial tweets posted by the hackers were deleted. Some handles named in te compromised tweets were suspended by the company too.
“This allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved,” the company said. The tech-company also added that there was no indication that Twitter’s systems had been compromised.
This is not the first time that Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account has been hacked. In 2016, his account was compromised by a group that also hacked the Twitter accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
