Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Taylor Swift Responds To Hackers: No Nude Photos Stolen From Instagram Or Twitter


Hackers took control of Taylor Swift’s Twitter and Instagram accounts on Tuesday, later claiming to have stolen nude photos of the singer-songwriter. The attackers' tweets told Swift’s more than 51 million followers to follow the purported leader of notorious hacking group Lizard Squad.



The accounts appeared to be quickly recovered, as the hacker’s tweets were deleted in less than 20 minutes. Taylor Swift has the fourth most-popular account on Twitter, making the attack one of the most high-profile to have happened on the social network.

“Well, now I’m awake,” Swift said on Tumblr after finding out about the attack. “My Twitter got hacked but don’t worry, Twitter is deleting the hacker tweets and locking my account until they can figure out how this happened and get me new passwords. Never a dull moment.”

Soon after, the hackers broke into Swift's Instagram account, which has over 20 million followers, posting a similar message. It was also removed within a few minutes. “Now [my] instagram,” she said. “This is going to be a long day.”

One of the accounts mentioned by the hackers on Swift’s Twitter account later claimed to have stolen naked pictures of her. User @Lizzard said it would release the images for a donation in the anonymous cyber-currency Bitcoin.

The account has been used since last year, posting links to news reports about hacking incidents related to Lizard Squad, which gained notoriety over the last few months for claiming responsibility for attacks on Microsoft and Sony’s gaming networks.

The hackers' threat to release private photos of Taylor Swift comes less than a year after the release of a large collection of nude photos of female celebrities popularly known as Celebgate.

As of this writing, there is no evidence to support the hackers' claims that nude photos of Swift were stolen. Swift denies that any existed on her accounts, and the claim appears to be an attempt to quickly profit off of the attack.

"PS any hackers saying they have 'nudes'? Psssh you'd love that wouldn't you!" Swift said on Twitter. "Have fun photoshopping cause you got NOTHING."


No comments:

Post a Comment