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YouTube staffer suffered hacks of Twitter, Flipboard accounts

Vadim Lavrusik was one of the first to tweet about the shooting at YouTube's headquarters.

Alfred Ng Senior Reporter / CNET News
Alfred Ng was a senior reporter for CNET News. He was raised in Brooklyn and previously worked on the New York Daily News's social media and breaking news teams.
Alfred Ng
2 min read
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New tweets continued to pop up on Lavrusik's account after he had been hacked. 

Dara Kerr/CNET

The YouTube staffer whose Twitter account was hacked during Tuesday's shooting incident also saw his Flipboard account compromised.

Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager for YouTube, was one of the first people to tweet about the shooting, which injured three people. The suspected shooter, Nasim Aghdam, died from a self-inflicted wound, police said.

Shortly after Lavrusik's first tweet, two fraudulent tweets appeared on his account, one making fun of his name, and another claiming one of his friends was lost in the shooting. The latter tweet had a link from Lavrusik's Flipboard account that showed a picture of YouTube personality Keemstar.

The Twitter team, including CEO Jack Dorsey, worked to fix Lavrusik's account and restored it by Tuesday evening. Twitter said it was "aware of attempts by some people to deceive others with misinformation around this tragedy."

It turns out that Lavrusik's Flipboard account also was hacked. The hacker who accessed his Twitter page sent a link uploaded to the Flipboard account.

"We had strong evidence that Mr. Lavrusik did not authorize the activity even though our information indicates that whoever did this used the password associated with the account to gain access," Christel van der Boom, a Flipboard spokeswoman, said in an email.

Flipboard has since removed the fraudulent posts and blocked access to "further unauthorized use of the account," she said.

Watch this: YouTube HQ shooter identified

Correction, April 4 at 8:32 a.m. PT:  This story initially misstated the nature and method of the hacks affecting Lavrusik. His Twitter and Flipboard accounts were compromised separately.

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