It became known that about half of the official Twitter accounts of the teams that are in the American National Football League got hacked on Sunday and Monday. The breach came just a week before the Super Bowl.
Reportedly, a Saudi “white hat” hacking group is responsible for taking control of the NFL’s teams’ accounts, which also included some of the Instagram and Facebook accounts. OurMine is a group that promotes its cybersecurity services and positions itself as one that breaches systems with good intentions.
As soon as Twitter became aware of the incident, the social media platform locked the hacked accounts. By now, most of them are restored. The @OurM1ne account was also suspended.
Dov Kleiman, an NFL reporter, posted some tweets showing all accounts that were hacked. You can see the full list in a thread.
The twitter accounts for the @NFL, @Chiefs, @packers and @ChicagoBears got hacked. pic.twitter.com/7Ps2kINm4b
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 27, 2020
The deleted tweets read: “We’re back (OurMine). We are here to show people that everything is hackable.” The profile photos and banners of the accounts have also disappeared.
The first team that suffered from the breach was the Chicago Bears. The team’s account was hacked early on Sunday morning. On Tuesday, the NFL managed to secure all accounts. Other hacked accounts include the NFL’s account itself and those of other teams such as Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, 49ers, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Browns, Philadelphia Eagles, Denver Broncos, Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Chargers, and New York Giants, etc.
NFL said in a statement regarding the incident: On Monday, the NFL Cybersecurity department became aware of a breach of a league-related social media account. Targeted breaches and additional failed attempts were discovered across the league and team accounts. The NFL took immediate action and directed the teams to secure their social media accounts and prevent further unauthorized access. Simultaneously, the league alerted the social media platform providers and, with their assistance, secured all league and club accounts. We continue to work diligently with the teams, which have resumed normal operations.
The NFL and teams are cooperating with its social media platform providers and law enforcement.
