The cybercriminal group OurMine has struck again, claiming responsibility for hijacking and defacing the Twitter accounts of the US National Football League (NFL) and 15 of its teams.
The timing is pointed: The attacks hit during this, the media-hectic week that leads up to Sunday’s Super Bowl Championship, which will pit the 49ers against the Chiefs.
OurMine has a long history of hijacking high profile accounts to turn them into billboards to advertise its so-called security “services” and/or to vandalize pages, like it did to BuzzFeed back in the group’s busy-beaver year of 2016.
OurMine has also hijacked the Twitter accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the Twitter and Pinterest accounts of Mr. Social Media himself – Mark Zuckerberg – as well as Channing Tatum and Captain America, along with the accounts of his Marvel buddies, including The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and Ant-man.
Here’s one example of the spiel with which OurMine littered NFL teams’ accounts, posted on the Twitter account of the Chicago Bears on Sunday:
From Sunday through Monday, OurMine also targeted the NFL’s own Twitter account, along with the Twitter and/or Facebook and/or Instagram accounts of the Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, and Arizona Cardinals.
Twitter suspended the @OurM1ne account about two hours after the first football teams’ accounts were compromised.
Many of the hijacked accounts had this message posted:
Hi, we’re back. We are here to show people that everything is hackable.
OurMine left contact details as well as a link to its website, where it offers paid “security services” for individuals as well as companies.