[News] Facebook's Twitter and Instagram accounts hacked

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Facebook's social media accounts were temporarily taken over by a group of hackers on Friday afternoon. The hacking group OurMine posted on the Twitter and Instagram accounts for Facebook and Messenger, writing "even Facebook is hackable". The accounts have now been restored. OurMine claims its attacks are an attempt to show cyber vulnerabilities. In January it hijacked over a dozen accounts for teams in the US National Football League.

The group posted a statement on Facebook's Twitter account. "Hi, we are OurMine. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security is better then Twitter." It also hijacked the Facebook and Messenger accounts on Instagram to post a photo of OurMine's logo. Facebook's own website was not hacked. Twitter confirmed that the hacking occurred via a third-party and that accounts were locked once it was alerted to the issue. "As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them," Twitter said in a statement.

Hackers temporarily took over Facebook's accounts on Twitter and Instagram on Friday through a third-party platform, raising concerns about the security of the social networks. Both accounts are back to normal.At around 3:50 p.m., hacker group OurMine tweeted from Facebook's Twitter account. The same group also hijacked the Twitter accounts of more than a dozen NFL teams in January before the SuperBowl and has also hacked the accounts of tech moguls such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai."Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter," the group said in a tweet that has now been deleted. Hackers also compromised the Twitter account for Facebook's messaging service. Around the same time, the group took over Facebook's Instagram account and posted photos of the group's logo.A Twitter spokeswoman confirmed that Facebook's account was hacked through a third-party platform. "As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them," she said in a statement. Twitter declined to name the third-party platform, but a screenshot of the tweets show that the posts came from social media management tool Khoros. Instagram and Khoros didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The attack on Facebook seems to have followed a similar hack on teams in the National Football League. The accounts appear to have been accessed via the third-party platform Khoros. Khoros is a marketing platform that businesses can use to manage their social media communications. Typically these platforms manage or have access to the passwords and login details of their customers. Khoros did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

OurMine is a Dubai-based hacking group that attacked the accounts of corporations and high-profile individuals in the past. In the past, it has temporality infiltrated the social media account of Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai, and the corporate accounts of Netflix and ESPN The group claims its attacks are designed to show a lack of security. But it also instructs victims to use its services to improve safeguards.