Another day, another hack.
Some of Facebook's official social media accounts were temporarily hijacked by a firm that has compromised accounts belonging to other high-profile tech companies.
Late Friday evening, the hacking firm OurMine cracked into Facebook's official handle on Twitter and tweeted, "Hi, we are OurMine. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security is better than Twitter."
The firm says its agenda is to generate awareness about cyber vulnerabilities.
A digital tussle played out for the world to see as Facebook worked to remove content seemingly posted by OurMine. Almost as soon as the social networking site would take a post down, a new one would appear. The exchange lasted less than half an hour, The Verge reports.
Security researcher Jane Manchung Wong captured the incident in real-time, uploading a screengrabbed video soon after it ended.
Facebook Messenger's Twitter page was hacked in a similar manner along with Facebook's Instagram account. The tech giant's official website was not hacked.
Facebook wasn't immediately available for comment, however, a spokesperson for Twitter told The Verge the takeover happened through a third-party platform.
"As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised account and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them," Twitter said in a statement.
According to screenshots of the tweets, the third-party platform may have been linked to the social media management site Khoros.
OurMine is known for breaking into social networking accounts belonging to celebrities and media companies. In 2017, the team of "white hat" hackers compromised several HBO official Twitter profiles, including the official Game of Thrones page. Netflix, Marvel and the NFL have also been targeted.
OurMine says it has no bad intentions and claims that its purpose is to help companies secure vulnerabilities.
"Not only will we give you access to all your accounts again, we will give you future security tips and assist you with securing your account to (its) maximum potential," OurMine said on its website.
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Citation: 'Even Facebook is hackable': Social networking website's Twitter page was compromised (2020, February 10) retrieved 10 February 2020 from https://techxplore.com/news/2020-02-facebook-hackable-social-networking-website.html
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