OurMine re-branded itself as a security firm
AB Wire
OurMine, a three-man hacker group was hacked the Quora account of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and posted several messages.
This group previously gained access to Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts simply by finding out his password from the 2012 LinkedIn breach.
The tweets about the hack of Quora account was appeared on Pichai’s Twitter account as well because the Google CEO’s Quora account was linked to the Twitter account. Those tweets have been removed later.
The group managed to break into the account by exploiting vulnerability in the Quora’s platform, one that apparently was reported to the company with no response in terms of acknowledging or fixing.
The team has hijacked social media accounts of YouTube gamer PewDiePie, ex-Twitter CEOs Ev Williams and Dick Costolo, Hollywood actor Channing Tatum, Amazon Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels, Writer Matthew Yglesias, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Award winning American blogger Ree Drummond and Businesswoman Randi Zuckerberg.
OurMine is re-branded itself as a security firm offering superior cyber-security services and guidance. The strategy to gain new customers is different but apparently the company has already made $16,500 selling its services as reported by mic.com. The group yet insisting that they don’t change passwords or damage and distribute personal information, the group has faced flak for asking to be paid over tweets in exchange for the help they offer.
The group started as a hacker group in 2014 and it’s hard to trace the base of the team as it has been routing it’s traffic using VPN and the details in domain database also seem to be through a third-party registrar.
Some of the website owners have started a change.org petition to shut down the group.