A hacker or a group of hackers managed to get a hold of the Twitter account of the social media giant's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, on Friday last week.
Prior to the company securing Dorsey's account, the hacker managed to send out several public tweets and retweets that included profanities and racial slurs to the CEO's more than 4 million followers.
According to Twitter, the hackers managed to log in to Dorsey's account by compromising the phone number that was associated with the account. The hackers used the phone number to authorize access to the account, which the company stated was a security oversight by the telecommunications carrier.
Twitter immediately released a statement following the hack stating that there was no reason to believe that its systems were compromised. The company reiterated that other accounts were not in danger of being hacked and that the event was an isolated one.
Among the different tweets that were sent out to Dorsey's followers was a post about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler being innocent. Other tweets that were sent out included messages against different ethnic groups and races such as black people and Jews. Another tweet has suggested that terrorist had placed bombs on Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.
Once the company got back control of Dorsey's account, all of the offensive tweets and retweets were immediately deleted. The Twitter accounts of everyone that was included in the tweets and retweets were also suspended.
Some of the offensive tweets had made their way into the company's mobile text messaging service, Cloudhopper. The company acquired the company back in 2010. Twitter did not immediately confirm whether the hack had anything to do with its messaging service's systems.
While the company had stated that the hack was not an indication of a security problem within its systems, the hackers that commandeered Dorsey's account had used a hashtag that was used during several hacks of YouTube personalities just a week prior.
The hacking incident has raised questions with regulators and concerned citizens over the potential vulnerabilities of social media platforms. Twitter is a particularly popular platform that is constantly being used by politicians and world leaders. US President Donald Trump popularly uses the platform almost every day to make announcements and to address his constituents and rivals.
The incident was not the first time that hackers had obtained access to heads of social media companies. In 2016, a group of hackers got access to Twitter accounts of tech CEOs, including Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
