Sony Music’s Twitter Account Was Recently Hacked

On December 26, 2016, one of Sony Music’s Twitter account, @SonyMusicGlobal, tweeted that Britney Spears had died. They reported that she had died around 8 in the morning. The language of the tweet immediately suggested that their Twitter account had been hacked. The tweet said: “britney spears is dead by accident! we will tell you more soon #RIPBritney.” As to why the hacking group chose Britney Spears, they most likely targeted her as a “joke.” Still, that didn’t stop some users from believing the tweet, or at least finding it important enough to retweet. Thousands of Twitter users found the news to be significant.

An issue of poor security.

Many suspect that the hacking group was able to gain access to these accounts through leaked password information from previous security breaches. This incident certainly reiterates how important it is to make sure all of your online accounts are secure. In addition to making stronger passwords, and changing your passwords regularly, try using two-step verification to make your accounts stronger. To make your accounts even more secure, make sure to lock your apps and add password protection so that only you can access your information. Click here to lock your apps now:

Within the same hour, a rep for Britney Spears confirmed that she was still alive. During that same hour, @SonyMusicGlobal acknowledged that the tweet was not theirs. They reported that someone with a new IP address had accessed their account and posted about Britney Spears’s death. They confirmed that Spears had not died. They also added the hashtag, “#OurMine,” which directly refers to a hacking group that is known for hacking social networking accounts in a similar manner.

Who was behind the attack?

According to Tech Crunch, the hacking group, OurMine, is likely made up of younger people from around the world. Their mission, reportedly, is to test the security of various social networking accounts belonging to people or brands of influence. One way that they do this is to check for an account’s password strength. Once they gain access to an account, they typically post that their group has hacked the account, and tell the victim to contact an email address about how they can improve their security.

Over the past year they have hacked Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking accounts, Sundar Pichai’s Quora account, and Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account, among others. They also recently hacked Twitter accounts belonging to Netflix and Marvel, in addition to hacking Buzzfeed’s website.