Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account ‘compromised,’ posted racial slurs
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was hacked on his own platform, his company said, with a torrent of strange tweets sent from his account. Twitter said it is investigating the matter further.
Dorsey’s Twitter account began putting out inflammatory tweets on Friday afternoon, just before 4pm, according to CNBC. Some of the posts spoke approvingly of the Nazis, while others included racial slurs.
The tweets have since been deleted.
Yes, Jack's account was compromised. We're working on it and investigating what happened.
— Brandon Borrman (@bborrman) August 30, 2019
Twitter declared the account "secure" around 5:30 pm EDT on Friday, adding there were no indications the company's computer systems had been compromised.
The offending tweets were sent through Cloudhopper, originally a third-party app that Twitter bought in 2010.
The hack appears to have been carried out by a group known as ‘Chuckling Squad’ on chat platform Discord; during the intrusion Dorsey’s account repeatedly tweeted out the name of the group as hashtags.
Twitter CEO @jack's account has been hacked, apparently by an entity called Chuckling Squad, which also recently hacked the accounts of YouTube stars James Charles and Shane Dawson, among others. https://t.co/FaoPN7tvtxpic.twitter.com/tPNpsc3so2
— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) August 30, 2019
This is the same group that seems to have been responsible for last month’s hack of the London Metropolitan Police, which took over the Twitter account as well as the website of the largest UK police force.Apparently using an automated press release feature, the hackers used the Met Police Twitter to post obscenities, racial slurs and references to themselves or their friends.
Also on rt.com London police Twitter blares ‘F*CK THE POLICE’ in apparent hackIt’s not the first time Dorsey had troubles with his Twitter account. In November 2016, his account was briefly suspended due to what the company claimed was an “internal mistake.” The suspension – which lasted only half an hour – prompted netizens to taunt Dorsey that he was “getting a taste of his own medicine.”
Twitter has been waging an ever-expanding crackdown on fringe voices in the name of protecting “healthy” discourse on the platform. Some, including US President Donald Trump, have argued that the campaign is skewed against conservatives and called it censorship.
The hacking group that hijacked Dorsey’s Twitter account on Friday reportedly demanded the CEO to un-ban certain accounts.
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