South Africa cricket team handle was compromised on Monday morning IST. (Source: AP)The official Twitter account of South African cricket board (OfficialCSA) was compromised overnight resulting in multiple tweets trying to sell bitcoin lottery. It all began at 4.20 AM IST on Monday with the tweet stating, “@OfficialCSA is partnering with @lunomoney for the fist South African Bitcoin Lottery. Simply send 0,01 BTC to 13My18T92DCzGdrtiCgRuS32T6rFLjnG56 and your BTC Wallet Address will be entered into a BTC Lottery for 20BTC (That’s Over R1Mil). Lottery closes at 15 Jan @ 10PM.” with two more tweets around the topic. The compromised nature and spam tweets continued in the morning with two more post 9 AM in the Indian time zone.
World cricket body ICC acknowledged the account has been compromised and asked the users not to engage with the Twitter handle until it has been fixed and erroneous tweets deleted. “Please be aware that the @OfficialCSA Twitter account has been compromised. Our friends in South Africa are working hard to resolve the situation quickly. Please do not click on any links or engage with the account until such time as this is rectified,” wrote ICC in a tweet. Meanwhile, Alistair Hogg, Digital Content Manager at ICC, also shared that they’re working with the social media service to sort out the issue. He wrote in reply to a user, “Their account was compromised overnight. We are working with Twitter to sort it out.”
First instance of spammed tweet came at 4.20 AM IST.
The spam tweets continued a few hours later.
The spam tweets continued a few hours later.🚨 Please be aware that the @OfficialCSA Twitter account has been compromised. Our friends in South Africa are working hard to resolve the situation quickly.
Please do not click on any links or engage with the account until such time as this is rectified. pic.twitter.com/wJmk2v4sWg
— ICC (@ICC) 14 January 2019
On the field of play, South African cricket team will take the field in Johannesburg on Monday against Pakistan in the third Test. Pakistan go into the fourth day’s play needing 228 runs to win while Proteas need 7 wickets to inflict the clean sweep. South Africa had won the opening two Tests of the three-match series.
