Jack Dorsey's Twitter account hacked
Using a SIM swap attack, hackers compromise the Twitter CEO's account and post racist and sexist remarks.
- I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account was hacked Friday.
Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey's account was hacked Friday, with the people responsible tweeting sexist, racist and anti-Semitic comments, as well as bomb threats.
The tweets began at around 12:45 p.m. PT Friday, and also urged people to get several hashtags trending. They were up for about 20 minutes before being deleted, and included shoutouts to other Twitter users.
"Yes, Jack's account was compromised. We're working on it and investigating what happened," Brandon Borrman, head of Twitter comms, tweeted at 1:03 p.m. PT.
When asked for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to Twitter Comms' account, which tweeted a similar statement. "We're aware that @jack was compromised and investigating what happened," it tweeted.
Twitter's comms account then announced, at 2:22 p.m. PT, that Dorsey's account had just been secured.
"The account is now secure, and there is no indication that Twitter's systems have been compromised," the tweet said.
It's been reported that the hack could've been carried out by way of a SIM swap attack, where hackers bribe an employee of a carrier to switch the numbers associated with a SIM card, so they can intercept a two-factor authentication code and log in to an account.
The Twitter comms team confirmed the SIM swap attack at 5:12 p.m.
The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider. This allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) August 31, 2019
"The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider," Twitter Comms tweeted. "This allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved."
The group behind the hack appears to call itself the Chuckling Squad and has reportedly been behind other recent Twitter hacks. The hackers also urged people via the Dorsey tweets to "join the Chuckling Squad Discord server."
"Both the server and the server owner were permanently removed from Discord within minutes of this being reported to us," Discord said in a statement, according to The Verge.
Discord didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter has been under pressure to more quickly remove abusive content, terror-related content, misinformation, fake news and deepfakes.
Originally published Aug. 30, 1:10 p.m. PT.
Updates, 2:22 p.m.: Adds more detail; 2:30 p.m.: Twitter confirms account now secure; 3:48 p.m.: Adds report on SIM swap attack; 5:27 p.m.: Adds more detail and reported Discord statement; 5:33 p.m.: Includes confirmation of SIM swap attack.