Twitter says Olympics and IOC Accounts Hacked

Popular online social media platform Twitter on Saturday revealed that an official Twitter account of the Olympics and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) had been hacked and temporarily locked.

A spokesperson for the social media platform in an emailed statement said that the accounts were hacked through a third party platform.

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He further said, “As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are closely working with our partners to restore them.” Also, the IOC spokesperson said that the IOC was separately investigating the potential breach.

Twitter also stated that a similar incident occurred with the Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona’s Twitter account.

In the previous month, few days ahead of the Super Bowl series, the official Twitter accounts of several U.S. National Football League (NFL) teams, including the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs were also hacked. After a hack soccer club tweeted “FC Barcelona will conduct a cybersecurity audit and will review all protocols and links with third-party tools, in order to avoid such incidents”.

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Also, Facebook’s Official Twitter accounts and its messaging app were briefly compromised earlier this month. A Facebook spokesperson said, “Some of our corporate social media accounts were briefly hacked but we have secured and restored access”.

As a precautionary measure, Twitter locked down the affected accounts and was working closely with partners to restore them as early as possible.