Colin Powell’s Facebook account has been hacked

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell is the latest public figure to have fallen victim to hackers, with a series of out-of-character messages posted to his Facebook page.

But before you jump to the conclusion that only a highly-sophistictaed gang of hackers, backed by an enemy nation, could possibly have had the skills to break into the Facebook account of the man who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War.. think again.

It appears that whoever broke into Colin Powell’s Facebook account, didn’t do so to steal secrets – but rather in a mischievous attempt to redistribute private photographs and emails previously stolen from the families of former presidents George H.W. Bush George W. Bush.

Indeed, some of the posts made to Colin Powell’s Facebook account contain images previously posted online by a hacker named “Guccifer”, who…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.