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Google CEO Sundar Pichai had his Quora account hacked last night, turning into the cutting-edge in alisting of major tech figures to have their social media presences hijacked by using a set calling itself “OurMine.” The breach comes much less than a month after both Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify boss Daniel Ek suffered a similar destiny.
The breach of Pichai’s account became obvious when tweets linking to Pichai’s Quora posts — referencing the OurMine institution — seemed on his reputable Twitter account late Sunday night time. not like the case of Daniel Ek, but, the hackers hadn’t gained access to Pichai’s Twitter account proper, rathercounting on Quora’s auto-tweet functionality to inform his half-a-million followers approximately the breach.
The mysterious OurMine organization‘s strategies seem to vary from different current high-profile hacks.instead of surely defacing a goal‘s social media presence, the collective behind OurMine says it is “trying out security,” advising the target to get in contact to “improve it.” regular humans also can pay for theinstitution‘s offerings, charging as much as $five,000 for a “scan” of social media debts, website onlinesafety holes, and other vulnerabilities.
people claiming to represent the institution tell Mic that they started out hacking bills to quietly gatherprivate information, converting their method to shill OurMine’s personal services on the fb, Twitter, andother social media bills of those excessive-profile goals affected. it’s now not clear what the method of “upgrading security” referred to in Pichai’s Quora hack includes, or whether or not it’s simple extortion,however OurMine says it has already made $sixteen,500 promoting its “offerings.”
OURMINE CLAIMS TO BE A 3–individual team “testing security”
talking to Mic, OurMine claimed to be a 3–individual crew. some specialists propose the institution is breaching large–name debts the usage of older databases of passwords to be had to nefarious actors: a way might also give an explanation for why it became Pichai’s Quora account hijacked in this example,instead of a ways greater frequently trafficked networks like Twitter or facebook. in advance this month, Mark Zuckerberg’s Pinterest account become hacked along his Twitter account, with OurMine reallypointing out that it had won get admission to the usage of the password “dadada,” revealed as a part ofthe 2012 LinkedIn hack.
it’s no longer clean whether or not Pichai paid to regain get right of entry to to his Quora account,however both the remarks and the auto-tweets were deleted a few hours when they were posted.different celeb figures say they could have a exceptional technique inside the case of a breach — musician deadmau5 told OurMine to “go fuckin’ crazy” with his social media bills in advance this yr if thegroup could get in.
