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