Courtesy Gadgets Now
Liquor baron and industrialist Vijay Mallya’s Twitter account hack on Friday morning came barely 10 days after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was taken over by hackers. The two high-profile breaches in quick succession have brought the spotlight back on cybersecurity .
Hackers posted expletive-laden tweets from Gandhi’s account on December 1. Soon after, his party’s account @INCIndia was also hacked. A message posted from the account said: “Coming up is a full dump of inc.in congress emails, stay tuned for Christmas special. We have enough info to drop your party down to shreds (sic).” Mallya’s hackers, identifying themselves as “Legion” shared 277 files pertaining to his financial dealings and asset records on his Twitter account itself. They also repeated the threat of releasing Congress emails.
“This could happen to anyone. It will continue to happen if people don’t take basic precaution,” says Altaf Halde, managing director of cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab in South Aisa. He recommends setting strong passwords, not repeating them across accounts, and to avoid clicking on suspicious links.
Various international celebrity accounts have been hacked in recent times. In 2016, hacker group Our Mine hacked social media accounts of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The group claims to have done this to raise aware ness about cyber security . Cyber-attacks with malicious intent are also aplenty. Personal pictures of singer Harry Styles, model Kendall Jenner, and actor Scarlett Johansson have been leaked online by hackers in the past.
