If there’s one person you’d think would use good security to protect social media accounts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be a good bet. But apparently, nothing is sacred: Zuckerberg’s Twitter, Pinterest and possibly Instagram accounts have all been hacked.
Zuckerberg’s accounts appear to have been compromised sometime on Sunday. In a series of messages posted to Zuck’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts, the hacker group OurMine took responsibility, and claimed they were just trying to raise awareness.
DON’T MISS: Can you spot how Facebook’s new font is different?
Their claim is that Zuckerberg’s password — which was “dadada” — was exposed by the 2012 LinkedIn password dump. That would make a lot of sense, because a) Zuckerberg hasn’t used his Twitter or Pinterest accounts in years, and b) a bunch of other celebrities have also seen their Twitter accounts hacked in the last few days.
By this morning, Zuckerberg appears to have regained control of his social media accounts, and OurMine’s Twitter account has been frozen. I guess things work a little more easily when you’re the CEO of the world’s largest social network, but it’s still a good cautionary tale for the rest of us, who will find it a little harder to regain control if (or when) we get hacked.
Ouch. Mark Zuckerberg's social media accounts have been hacked pic.twitter.com/KvVmXOIg5s
— Ben Hall (@Ben_Hall) June 5, 2016
The LinkedIn password leak is the largest of its kind in recent memory, consisting of the account info of some 164 million users. The danger of the leak isn’t so much exposing the details of people’s LinkedIn accounts, but rather exposing username and password combos that people often reuse across many sites.
Best practice is to use unique passwords on every site, but as this hack proves, even the best of us can’t be bothered. You can check if your LinkedIn password has been exposed with the HaveIBeenPwned tool. If so, you might want to change your password and enable two-factor authentication on any accounts you care about.
