Just weeks after hackers gained access to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s social media accounts, those same hackers say they have claimed another prominent victim. Sundar Pichai isn’t going to have a happy start to his week. The CEO of Google’s Quora account appears to have been hacked by a group called OurMine, which previously broke into Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts earlier this month.
Hacker group OurMine said on Monday that it had gained access to the Twitter and Quora accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The members were responsible for posting tweets to Pichai’s Twitter timeline before losing access. The hacking group OurMine said it plans to target more tech execs and celebrities.
The three-man hacker outfit has been posting messages on Quora through Pichai’s account; it’s also connected to his Twitter account and as a result, OurMine was able to publicize their hack to all 508,000 of his followers. The tweets have now been removed.
"We are just testing your security,” the hackers wrote, with the same message auto-posted via Quora to Pichai’s Twitter account. On Monday, the posts had been deleted.
The hacks have been fairly innocuous so far, with no major repercussions or sensitive data stolen. But Silicon Valley types are likely wondering who'll be next.
In Zuckerberg's case, the hackers claimed to have broken in by finding his password, “dadada,” which was exposed in a breach at LinkedIn. In Pichai’s case, OurMine only said that “his security was really weak.” The group posted information about the hack on its website.
OurMine said via email that it would continue to hack the accounts of tech executives and celebrities. Last week, the group claimed to have taken over the Twitter accounts of movie star Channing Tatum and of Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, and posted screenshots.
On Monday this week, the group hit the Twitter account of Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. In a tweet, Vogels said it was actually his Bitly account that had been compromised. So far, it seems the hacks are more of a publicity stunt. The group has tweeted that users can upgrade their security by purchasing OurMine’s services.
For $100, the group claims it can improve the security of social media accounts. For $1,000, it will scan a website for vulnerabilities.
"We are just trying to tell everyone that nobody is safe!” OurMine said via email. Some accounts were broken into because of weak passwords, others because of some "vulnerability," the group added, without specifying. OurMine claimed to have made $18,400 so far selling its services.
OurMine is attempting to rebrand itself as a 'SECURITY FIRM' and offering its support to those it targets so that these incidents don’t occur again. It’s probably not the best way to garner your potential customers’ trust, but that’s the way OurMine seems to enjoy doing business.
We’ve contacted Google, Quora and OurMine for comment and will update this post if there’s a response.
In an Interview, OurMine told tech site "The Next Web" (TNW) that it was only conducting a test:
“We are just testing people security (sic), we never change their passwords, we did it because there is other hackers can hack them and change everything.”
The group also noted that it managed to break into Pichai’s account by exploiting a vulnerability in Quora’s platform – one that it claims to have reported to the company, with no response. Naturally, if you’re on Quora, you’ll want to change your password right away and make sure it isn’t the same as what you for other services.
Quora reportedly told TNW in a statement that it doesn’t believe a vulnerability on its platform led to Pichai’s account being broken into:
We are confident that Sundar Pichai’s account was not accessed via a vulnerability in Quora’s systems. This is consistent with past reports where OurMine exploited previous password leaks on other services to gain access to accounts on Twitter or Facebook.
We also have no record of a report by OurMine pointing to a vulnerability. We recommend that people use unique passwords for accounts on different services, so that a security breach on one service does not lead to attackers gaining access to accounts on other services. Safeguarding our users is very important to us, which makes security at Quora one of our highest priorities.
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