Spammers hack New York Times account on Twitter

Yesterday, a Twitter account run by the New York Times was the latest high profile victim of an account hack.

The Moment, a fashion blog from the New York Times, which has over 510,000 followers on the micro-blogging network, fell foul of spammers who broke into their account and posted the following message:

everyone visit http://tinyurl.com/nakedcam for 100% FREE webcam girls/guys doing anything you ask them in the chat, I love it personally.

A couple of hours later, The Moment regained control of their account and posted the following explanation for the out-of-character Tweet:

Of course, it was never likely that a Twitter account with so many followers was going to remain under the control of hackers for long – but the spammers probably didn’t care about that. After all, if just a small percentage of people followed the link to check out…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter, Mastodon, or Threads to read more of the exclusive content we post.


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, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.