IOL gets hacked, posts streams of random retweets

Things went very badly wrong for South African media outlet IOL on Twitter today. Without warning, the group started retweeting from an apparently random selection of accounts, suggesting that it had either been deliberately hacked or had fallen prey to a malicious bot.

Fortunately for the online publisher, the hack appeared not to allow posters to post directly from its account, but the kind of stuff it was retweeting was hardly going to help its reputation.

Indeed, it didn’t take all that many random retweets before people started having a laugh at IOL’s expense:

Maybe the @IOL account isn't actually hacked, maybe their social media person has just found a really creative way to say 'I quit'.

— Deep Fried Man (@DeepFriedMan) July 14, 2014

Independent Newspapers’s comms team be like… lOL @IOL pic.twitter.com/OhzbIRKKU6

— James Hamilton (@hamboneZA) July 14, 2014

Does no one at IOL follow @iol? This is taking a very long time to sort out. pic.twitter.com/xmRKjPiqrW

— Stephanie Be (@StephanieBe) July 14, 2014

IOL News account has been hacked. Somewhere a comms manager is looking at their timeline like pic.twitter.com/zPZf5LEuH2

— HRH Gugu Mhlungu (@GugsM) July 14, 2014

.@IOL are currently getting what we refer to as 'Brazil'd'.

— Rob Forbes (@RobForbesDJ) July 14, 2014

IOL’s owner Independent Media has come under serious criticism this year, following a buyout by Sekunjalo Investments. The first controversy came about after Cape Times Editor Alide Dasnois was fired in the wake of a report by the newspaper that then Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson was guilty of maladministration and had irregularly awarded a Sekunkjalo subsidiary an R800-million tender.

After that, a number of newspapers in the Independent fold began publishing columns sympathetic to Sekunjalo head honcho Iqbal Surve. At the same time, however, a number of editors quit, the latest being Makhudu Sefara, although he did call the separation amicable.

It’s unclear whether the hack has anything to do with the recent goings on at Independent, but it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.