Earlier today, Bob Dylan and Sony Entertainment published tweets saying Britney Spears had passed away. She is completely fine, however, it seems Twitter cannot stop OurMine from toying with the user’s accounts regardless how famous or rich they are.
Mrs. Spears’ representatives dismissed the claims shortly after the news went viral, sources report, and the hoaxers later revealed themselves on a series of subsequent tweets from both accounts.
The OurMine group has been notorious for breaching high-profile social media accounts over the last year, including Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, the Youtuber known as Markiplier, Variety magazine, and many others.
Their latest effort was the hacking of Netflix’s official Twitter account, which they performed as a publicity stunt. They are white-hat (or non-criminal) hackers who profit from the sale of cyber security solutions.
Pop fans had a mini-stroke when they saw #RIPBritney on Twitter
@SonyMusicGlobal was the first account hacked by OurMine. The group proceeded to tweet that Mrs. Spears had died “by accident” and that they would add details on the subject soon.
They included the hashtag #RIPBritney in that tweet and another one where they made a Twitter mention to the singer’s verified profile.
@bobdylan followed with a similar tweet a few minutes later, after which both accounts posted tweets from OurMine saying they had determined @britneyspears to be a hacked account and that the singer was still alive.
All of the fake tweets subsequently disappeared from both accounts. Sony’s fake tweets did not garner more than 300 retweets. The most shared were Bob Dylan’s first tweet, which got a little more than 700, and a lesser number of likes.
OurMine Vs. Anonymous
The white-hat group of hackers has received media comparison to Anonymous, but in reality, they could not be more different. They are (reportedly) a three-person hacking team with an individual website from which potential clients can hire their services.
On the other hand, Anonymous is a collective with a non-limited number of members. Anyone can claim to be a part of Anonymous. Besides, some experts do not consider them entirely white-hat, as they face charges for illicit online activities.
OurMine recently disclosed to Mic.com they started hacking for the sole purpose of storing information, but they did not say what they wanted to do with the data.
Then, the team shifted to security scanning and data protection, performing high-profile hackings to promote cyber security and awareness towards the dangers of the internet.
Source: The Fader