Washington
CNN
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A spokesman for previous President Donald Trump reported Wednesday that Donald Trump Jr.’s account on X – the system formerly known as Twitter – experienced been compromised immediately after the account started sharing a series of uncommon and erratic posts.
“Don’s account has been hacked,” Andrew Surabian posted on X, including that a write-up professing the previous president had died was “obviously not legitimate.”
In addition to falsely announcing the death of the senior Trump, the compromised account also claimed that Trump Jr. would be managing for president himself. Inside of minutes, the submit experienced been reshared a lot more than 1,000 instances on X and considered hundreds of 1000’s of times.
One more post appeared to threaten the country of North Korea, although a pinned put up on the account’s profile insulted President Joe Biden with the use of a racist epithet.
Around a fifty percent-hour immediately after the posts surfaced, they experienced been taken out. X did not react to CNN’s request for remark.
The incident raises contemporary inquiries about X’s role in securing user accounts, especially people belonging to significant-profile political figures as the system prepares for the 2024 elections. In August, X mentioned it is staffing up on its protection and election teams following mass layoffs last yr that according to operator Elon Musk finally removed a lot more than 80% of the company’s headcount.
It is also unclear regardless of whether the compromise could have resulted in unauthorized access of Trump Jr.’s private immediate messages, or whether or not Trump Jr. may well have experienced two-issue authentication enabled on his account.
X is however beneath investigation by the Federal Trade Commission about the company’s capacity to adequately guard person privacy and whether it could have violated binding commitments it created in 2011 to securing the system. The investigation commenced following the company’s former safety main, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, submitted a whistleblower disclosure first noted by CNN and The Washington Post previous yr that alleged common and unaddressed security vulnerabilities.
This is not the very first time superior-profile accounts on the system have been taken over. In 2020, for example, hackers received command of accounts belonging to former President Barack Obama, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and many others which includes Biden and Musk on their own by posing as Twitter’s IT assist. At the time, Twitter admitted that the hackers experienced downloaded account information that likely integrated non-public messages.