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TechCybersecurity

Hackers Take Over Pokémon Go Creator’s Twitter Account

By
David Meyer
David Meyer
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By
David Meyer
David Meyer
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August 1, 2016, 4:06 AM ET
David

The OurMine hacking team on Sunday commandeered the Twitter account of John Hanke, the CEO of Pokémon Go firm Niantic.

The attackers used the opportunity to tweet out the claim that the hack was “for Brazil.” The country is indeed one of those in which the hit game has not yet been rolled out, reportedly to the chagrin of athletes who have arrived for the Rio Olympics.

“The Brazilian community didn’t ask for this,” one irritated Twitter user retorted.

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As is OurMine’s modus operandi, the hacking team also claimed that it was “testing [Hanke’s] security” and offered its services to “upgrade” his security.

Judging by a subsequent tweet that claimed his Twitter password was something very simple and obvious, that upgrade would involve little more than choosing a better password and maybe turning on two-factor authentication (though Twitter’s SMS-based authentication method leaves a lot to be desired).

OurMine last month claimed to be behind outages on the Pokémon Go network, although it is hard to verify that claim—it could just be that Niantic’s servers were overwhelmed by high levels of demand from real people, rather than being floored by a deliberate denial-of-service attack.

For more on hackers and the game, watch our video.

What OurMine is demonstrably good at, however, is taking over people’s Twitter accounts. Its victims include Google (GOOG) CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter (TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey and, more recently, William Shatner.

The group recently also defaced the website of tech blog TechCrunch.

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By David Meyer
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