Hackers Target Google CEO, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Channing Tatum; Says It Was A Favor

Hackers seem to be on a roll recently, breaching numerous secure sites and accounts like they were shopping at Walmart. Among the latest to be victimized by these hackers is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, and even actor Channing Tatum. One of the teams that are responsible for these attacks is called “OurMine” and according to them, they were doing their targets a favor.

Wired divided the kinds of online activities related to security into three parts; black hat, white hat, and something in between. As the name suggests, black hat involves nefarious activities while white hat is meant to counter the former. Then there are hackers like those who are part of “OurMine” who seem to have lost touch with their own identities.

When they hacked into the Twitter accounts of their targets, the team only left messages alerting users as well as their followers that the account has been hacked. As far as anyone can tell, nothing else has been tampered with and the passwords have been left intact. Still, the hackers displayed many of the traits that Black Hat hackers are known for.

They breached personal accounts without regard for privacy under the guise of concern for security, and they even posted their activities on their official website. By the way, “OurMine” is also offering their services to those who want to test the strength of their website’s security at $1,000 for one website and $5,000 to completely check the whole company’s security. So, they definitely believe that they are the good guys.

As for how the hackers were able to gain access to private accounts, the good news is Twitter has not been breached directly; at least, not this time. Instead, the hackers used third-party sites like Quora in the case of Pichai.

As TechCrunch reported, “OurMine” supposedly took advantage of a vulnerability in Quora’s security to gain Pichai’s password. Quora is denying the assertions, though, and they insist that there has been no security breach on their end.