Being hacked is one threat that we can’t escape. Hackers have left celebrities confused about how safe the information they share on social media is. After Kanye West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, was attacked by robbers in her hotel room in Paris, most people have been left perplexed over how vulnerable social media leaves them. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed was hacked by OurMine. This is a hacking group that is well known for hacking celebrities, tech CEOs and other accounts.
This attack left a huge loss to BuzzFeed as most of their articles were lost during the hack attack. BuzzFeed had published an investigation that aimed to prove that OurMine is not a hacking group but an Arabian high schooler. After they published this investigation on Tuesday, they were hacked.
On Wednesday, a few articles on BuzzFeed had their headlines altered to read “HACKED BY OURMINE” which is an attack similar to other previous OurMine attacks. The Reporter for OurMine published an article saying they were hacked in the morning of that day. They promised to change their articles back which they successfully did.
OurMine is well-known for hacking. The group which has four members says that they offer security services. When confronted about the hacks, they explain that it is to test people’s security and portray the dangers of reusing passwords even though they are also known for using third party applications to access social media accounts and alter whatever they want. OurMine have also been known to use passwords provided in other breaches to access accounts with the same password.
The hacking group stole data from BuzzFeed though they did not say which type of data they had. The attack is unusual for the hacking group since they are mostly known to target large organisations or high profiled persons such as the Chief Executive Officers of Google, Twitter, Facebook and others.
The hacking group OurMine altered several posts on https://t.co/20lNl4QWRf following BuzzFeed News reporting on the group pic.twitter.com/1bYcxZ3QlS
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 5, 2016
People have been advised not to reuse their passwords. Password reuse means using a single passwordBest Password Managers for your device! to protect multiple accounts on different sites of platforms. This makes it easy for a hacker to access user accounts once the single password is known.
This is what OurMine claims they try to show people. People are often advised to be careful about their devices and the applications on their phones they grant access to. They are often used as doorways to user accounts and information.
Celebrities who post about their day to day life know that they have to be careful about their accounts’ security. This is also advisable for other people as well. Since OurMine are known to retaliate against people who publish false information about them, as seen in the previous case with BuzzFeed and other bloggers and reporters.
