Twitter account of Scotland Yard hacked and posted bizarre messages

The principal Twitter account of Scotland Yard, which has more than 1.2 million followers, was hacked and tweeted a series of bizarre messages on Friday night.

Hackers took over the Scotland Yard’s principal Twitter account and tweeted a dozen bizarre messages on Friday night, some of the tweets referred to the British rapper Digga D.

Digga D, real name Rhys Herbert, was jailed last year aged 17 along with other four members of his gang after they were caught with baseball bats and machetes, the police discovered they were planning to attack another gang.

The messages were expressing anti-police sentiment and calling for the jailed rapper to be released.

“Free Digga D,” states one of the Tweet.

Below the message posted by the Met police Supt, Roy Smith after the breach:

London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed that hackers also targeted emails and news pages.

Scotland Yard pointed out that its IT infrastructure had not been compromised, the incident only affected the press office’s online provider, MyNewsDesk. The MyNewsDesk service automatically spreads content to the Met’s website and Twitter account once it is published. It also sends emails to subscribers.

“Unauthorised messages appeared on the news section of our website,” states Scotland Yard. “We apologise to our subscribers and followers for the messages they have received.“

“We are confident the only security issue relates to access to our MyNewsDesk account. We have begun making changes to our access arrangements to MyNewsDesk,” .

“There has been no ‘hack’ of the Met Police’s own IT infrastructure. We are assessing to establish what criminal offences have been committed.”

US President Donald Trump caught the opportunity to attack the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, he retweeted an image of the hijacked Metropolitan Police account.

UK authorities regained control of its account on Saturday.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

[adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Scotland Yard, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.