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Hackers claim hijack of Mark Zuckerberg's social-networking accounts

Hack of Facebook CEO's Twitter and Pinterest accounts may be related to a massive hack of LinkedIn from 2012.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Watch this: Mark Zuckerberg's been hacked

Did the massive data dump of LinkedIn accounts last month also include the login credentials of Mark Zuckerberg?

Ourmine, a hacker group with 41,000 followers on Twitter, claimed Sunday to have compromised the Facebook CEO's Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter accounts. Zuckerberg's verified but little-used Twitter account appears normal at this writing, but Engadget posted images showing it defaced.

In a tweet, the group bragged about the alleged hacks and invited Zuckerberg to contact the group.

A similar message was left on a Pinterest account allegedly associated with Zuckerberg.

On May 18, LinkedIn said that more than 100 million members' email and password combinations hacked during a 2012 data breach had just been posted online. In the same breach, hackers stole and publicly released a separate set of 6.5 million encrypted passwords that year.

Facebook said Monday that none of the company's systems or accounts were accessed and that Zuckerberg's affected accounts have since been re-secured. The company also denied that Zuckerberg's Instagram account had been compromised.

Citing company privacy policy, Twitter declined to comment. Representatives for Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn did not respond to requests for comment.

Updated at 4:40 p.m. PT with Twitter reply, and 6/6 with Facebook statement.