Skip to main content

NFL: Multiple teams’ social media accounts targeted by hackers

 

“Everything is hackable,” a message posted to the social media accounts of multiple NFL teams said on Sunday. And yes, it was written by hackers.

Recommended Videos

The NFL’s social media feeds, along with those belonging to teams such as the Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Eagles, were all temporarily taken over by a hacking group purporting to be OurMine, which has been behind similar kinds of activity in recent years.

Across Sunday and Monday, other targets included the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, who are set to face each other in the Super Bowl on 2 February. In all, 15 teams were hit — 14 had their Twitter accounts compromised, with several also seeing their Instagram and Facebook accounts targeted, too.

OurMine said it had carried out the attacks to expose the security weaknesses of various social media services.

Many of the messages posted on the hacked accounts touted OurMine’s own business services for improving online security. The group also swapped out some of the teams’ profile pictures or headers, or deleted them altogether, according to a BBC report.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Some of the compromised accounts even announced surprise news for fans. Take the Chicago Bears. A message posted on its Twitter account, which has 1.8 million followers, announced that Saudi Arabian royal court advisor Turki Al-Sheikh had become the Bears’ new owner, while another message said one of the Bears’ big players — Khalil Mack — was being traded for $1. A short while later, the hackers followed up with the message, “Just kidding.”

After regaining control of its account, the Bears tweeted an apology to its fans:

Sources claiming to be from OurMine told the BBC that the hacking group had contacted the NFL prior to the attack offering to improve the teams’ online security, but it heard nothing back.

Twitter later confirmed that the accounts had been temporarily taken over by a third-party, saying: “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at the NFL to restore them.” It declined to offer any information on how the attack may have occurred.

OurMine, which says it’s currently based in Dubai, has claimed responsibility for many similar hacks since its formation in 2014. For example, in 2016 it targeted the social media accounts of some big names in tech, including Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the man at the top of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. This week’s hack marks the return of the group after several years of little activity.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more