VIDEO: George Harrison finds death is no escape from hackers

It would be nice to think George Harrison could rest in peace. But it seems his official Twitter account, run by the late Beatle’s estate, was briefly hijacked by a hacker.

The hacker appeared to be oblivious to the fact that Harrison had died in 2001, long before Twitter had been created, which made their attempt to reach out to “The Quiet One” to help him secure his account look a little silly.

The hacker changed the brief biog on the @GeorgeHarrison profile to read as follows:

Hey George, follow @j5ziol when you see this and shoot me a DM. I’ll help you secure your accounts :) I don’t want to cause you any harm, thanks bud.

As I explain in my video about the incident, when the hacker realised that Harrison had actually died 15 years ago he felt a complete wombat.

The hacker’s Twitter account has since been suspended.

There are a few lessons here:

1. Everyone should be careful not to reuse passwords between different accounts – perhaps the most likely way that the @GeorgeHarrison account was compromised.
2. All Twitter users should enable two-step verification (2SV) for a higher level of protection.
3. Hackers should do a better job of keeping up with their rock history.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

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.