Celebs whose social media accounts have been hacked

Bollywood Megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s twitter account was hacked on June 10 by a group of pro-Pakistan hackers named Ayyildiz Tim Turkish Cyber Army. The same group then hacked singer Adnan Sani’s account on June 11.

The group left a series of tweets on Big B's account. One of them read: “This is an important call to the whole world! We do condemn the irrespective behaviours of Iceland republic towards Turkish footballers. We speak softly but carry a big stick and inform you about the big Cyberattack here.

While the Twitterati had a gala time poking fun and making memes at the various tweets and the display picture of Imran Khan in both the profiles, this is not the first time the Twitter accounts of celebrities have been hacked.

In the past, the same group hacked accounts of a whole host of celebrities like Karan Johar, Rishi Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Shahid Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan.

And, not just Bollywood but Hollywood celebrities have also been victims of hacking. Celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai also had their accounts compromised by Saudi hackers from the OurMine group. The group was known for hacking social media accounts of high-profile tech celebrities by using old passwords from LinkedIn and MySpace data dumps.

Famous model Gigi Hadid, too, had her Twitter account hacked in May, when hackers launched a racist tirade with several tweets which praised Adolf Hitler and claimed she wished “Germany won World War II”.

What’s more, even the British Royal Family was not spared. In January, the Royal Family’s Twitter page was hacked, and the account posted a series of weird posts related to fungi, redundant alphabet letters, and even toilet-related math teasers.

But, the question is: how are these accounts hacked? With regards to the group which hacked Big B’s account, cybersecurity experts are of the view that users should be careful before clicking on the links received via direct messages since Twitter only contacts users via in-app or emailed messages sent from a @twitter.com email account.