Jeep the latest target of Twitter hacking

The Twitter hacks continued Tuesday, and the latest target appears to be Jeep.

The automotive brand’s profile page appeared to have been hacked early Tuesday afternoon, with the official avatar and background images swapped to those of Cadillac. “Just Empty Every Pocket, Sold To Cadillac,” read the revised text in the bio of Jeep’s official Twitter account.

Tweets from the compromised account — sometimes confusing and often profane — flew fast and furious early Tuesday afternoon.

 

 

The Cadillac images were taken down less than an hour after the apparent hacking, and within a few hours the text and offending tweets had also been removed. Jeep also posted a tweet acknowledging the hack.

 

 

The messages and profile changes were similar in tone to those that emerged from fast food giant Burger King after the chain fell victim to a hack on Monday, one that saw its official branding swapped to that of McDonald’s.

In another echo of Monday’s hack, Cadillac — the real one — distanced itself from the incident via Twitter. “Just to clarify, Cadillac is not connected to the hack of the @Jeep Twitter account,” the account tweeted.

So how do accounts get hacked in the first place? We can’t speak for Burger King or Jeep, but generally speaking, Twitter says accounts “may become compromised if you’ve entrusted your username and password to a malicious third-party application or website, if your Twitter account is vulnerable due to a weak password, if viruses or malware on your computer are collecting passwords, or if you’re on a compromised network.”