Last week, the Netherlands barred two Turkish ministers from speaking to expatriates ahead of a national memorandum. On 16 April, Turkey will be voting whether or not to allow Turkish President Erdogan to stay in power until 2029. And the president did not take the slight well: according to Fortune.com, Turkey warned that it would retaliate in the “harshest ways.”
Apparently these ways include Twitter hacks.
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Last night, Turkish hackers targeted verified accounts to spew Erdogan propaganda across the platform.
Rough translation: “#NaziGermany
#NaziNetherlands, a little #OTTOMAN SLAP for you, see you on #April16th. Can’t read it LEARN Turkish #RT” — Alex Hern (@alexhern) March 15, 2017
Hundreds of accounts were attacked, posting swastikas, #NaziGermany and #NaziHolland. According to The Verge, some accounts were even manipulated to sport the Turkish flag.
A number of Twitter users with verified accounts have had swastikas posted on their accounts in a mass hack
Targeted Twitters include Amnesty International, Justin Bieber, Forbes and BBC North America.
Several verified accounts including Duke University & Amnesty International remain compromised following widespread hack #Nazialmanyapic.twitter.com/6GH5Byik9E
— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 15, 2017
The hack seems to have been undertaken through Twitter Counter, a service that offers Twitter analytics to users.
Looks like the mass hack that’s hit a bunch of twitter accounts stems from https://t.co/UqLm4wUkbOpic.twitter.com/HCaB1wgjxh
— Alex Hern (@alexhern) March 15, 2017
The company have acknowledged the issue, and have halted all activities that allow the posting of tweets until the source is confirmed.
“Before any definite findings, we’ve already taken measures to contain such abuse of our users’ accounts, assuming it is indeed done using our system,” it told The Verge.
We’re aware that our service was hacked and have started an investigation into the matter.We’ve already taken measures to contain such abuse
— TheCounter (@thecounter) March 15, 2017
Several accounts have since apologised.
Earlier this morning our Twitter account was hacked. We’ve now deleted the hacked tweet and investigating what happened. Apologies & thanks
— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) March 15, 2017
This morning our Twitter account was hacked. We’ve now deleted the tweet and are investigating. We apologize for the earlier tweet.
— Duke University (@DukeU) March 15, 2017
Featured image: K. Hurley via Flickr (CC 2.0, resized)
