OurMine Strikes Again: Hacks Twitter Accounts Of Olympics, FC Barcelona

After hacking Facebook’s Twitter account earlier this month, the hacker group, which goes by the name OurMine, gained access to the Twitter accounts of Olympics and football club FC Barcelona on Saturday.

According to a report by Business Insider (BI), OurMine tweeted ‘Hi, we are OurMine’ and ‘everything is hackable’ after gaining access to the official account of Olympics.

On the other hand, OurMine posted an update that star footballer Neymar Jr. is all set to return to FC Barcelona after hacking the Twitter account of the football club. The tweet said, “Well, we read some private messages and it looks like Neymar will be back here.”

Explaining the breach, Twitter officials said that OurMine used a third-party platform for breaking into the accounts of FC Barcelona and Olympics. After the hack was identified, Twitter locked down both the accounts. Twitter said that it is working with other partners to restore the accounts.

Separately, while the International Olympic Committee also called for an investigation into this breach, FC Barcelona decided to run a cybersecurity audit for making its social media accounts more secure.

Who or What Is OurMine?

OurMine is a group of hackers which have constantly made headlines for hacking social media accounts of celebrities, private companies, and other institutions. The group is based in Saudi Arabia and has been active since 2016.

The company uses a third-party platform Khoros which is used by digital marketing agencies to post updates on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, among others.

In an email response to Business Insider, OurMine confirmed that it was behind the hacking on Twitter accounts of both Olympics and FC Barcelona. OurMine further added that it is a team of five hackers who select random targets for hacking their social media accounts.

OurMine also claimed that it is a ‘white hat’ group and hacks these accounts to show vulnerabilities in these social media platforms instead of doing something threatening. As the hacker group doesn’t have any sinister intentions, it claimed that it doesn’t even change the passwords of the hacked accounts.

In past, OurMine has successful hacked social media accounts of high profile celebrities such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, among others.

Earlier this month, OurMine hacked official Facebook accounts on Twitter and Instagram. OurMine, through Facebook’s official handle, tweeted, “Hi, we are OurMine. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security is better than Twitter.”

At that time, OurMine also hacked into Facebook and its messaging service Messenger’s Instagram handle and posted its logo on Facebook’s Instagram handle. Responding to the hack, Facebook said, “Some of our corporate social accounts were briefly hacked but we have secured and restored access.”

Besides hacking Twitter accounts of Facebook and its subsidiaries, the hacker group also defaced the accounts of National Football League (NFL) and 15 other teams participating in NFL last month.

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