From the first weekend of February, a hacker group self-appointed as OurMine began compromising some relevant Twitter accounts in the sports world, such as those of some National Football League (NFL) teams and sports media giant ESPN. Ethical hacking specialists report that this weekend OurMine reappeared, this time attacking the official Twitter accounts of FC Barcelona football club and the 2020 Olympic Games; Twitter confirmed the attack and mentioned that the accounts were temporary blocked after improper access.
“Hello, we are OurMine. Well, we read some private messages and it looks like Neymar will be back here,” mentions one of the tweets that the threat actors posted on the football club’s official account. In addition, the hacker group posted on both attacked accounts messages similar to those posted in their previous attacks, in which they claimed that “everything is hackable”.
This is OurMine’s third attack incident in less than a month, so professionals and enthusiasts of ethical hacking begin to raise the possibility of a vulnerability affecting Twitter, although representatives of the platform hold another explanation: Just as previous incidents, OurMine hackers managed to compromise the attacked accounts via a security flaw on a third-party platform, as reported by a Twitter spokesperson, although no additional details were provided about the attack on these accounts.
OurMine members identify themselves as an ethical hacking group whose sole purpose is to help companies find potential security vulnerabilities and find the best ways to fix them. However, it is easy to doubt the good intentions of these hackers, as every time OurMine hackers burst onto the scene, they do so using tactics such as login credential theft, brute force attacks and other malicious hacking practices.
According to the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), other hacking incidents perpetrated by OurMine have had extensive media impact, including the hacking of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account, cyberattacks against the founders of Wikipedia and even Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
He is a well-known expert in mobile security and malware analysis. He studied Computer Science at NYU and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2003. He is actively working as an anti-malware expert. He also worked for security companies like Kaspersky Lab. His everyday job includes researching about new malware and cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in mobile security and mobile vulnerabilities.
