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 naked webcam action then it will have been worth their while.

Clearly more people need to learn lessons of high profile attacks like this, and ensure that their online passwords are hard for the hackers to guess. Here’s a video where I explain exactly how to choose a hard-to-guess but easy-to-remember password:

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.