Dive Brief:
- “White hat” hackers from OurMine briefly took over the Twitter accounts for Netflix, the NFL and Marvel leaving a message in a tweet on those accounts stating, "Hey, it's OurMine, don't worry we are just testing your security, contact us to tell you more about that," as reported by both CNET and TechCrunch.
- The company previously did something similar when it took over the Twitter accounts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, actor Channing Tatum and TechCrunch. These moves have been seen as more of a publicity stunt than anything else in the past.
- OurMine’s stated mission is to try and break passwords for accounts with a large number of followers and influence, and, when successful posting messages on the hacked accounts, convince those figures to reach out for advice on better security practices.
Dive Insight:
Although OurMine’s hacking seems to be relatively benign, its success against well-known targets should give marketers pause and a reason to look into how secure their own social media logins might be. These measures should begin with the robustness of the password, but should also include taking stock of who might have login details that haven’t changed even if a person isn’t working on the relevant social media accounts either because he or she has left the company or due to changes in who is handling the accounts.
Advertising fraud is a far cry from social media account hacking, but the OurMine news coupled with this week’s revelation from digital security firm White Ops that a single Russian group is committing as much as $5 million in premium video ad fraud daily via its bot farm called Methbot reminds marketers that digital assets and ad spending are only as effective as the security around digital activities. Ad fraud just amounts to money going down the drain, but a truly malevolent group or individual could wreak a lot of havoc on a brand’s reputation with extended access to social media accounts.