The Washington Metropolitan Space Transit Authority (WMATA) has mentioned a hacker was accountable for a number of obscene messages which appeared on one in all its social media accounts earlier this week.
WMATA’s Twitter account, which has greater than 302,000 followers, was compromised within the early hours of Monday morning. At round 3:40am, the attacker modified the identify of the account from ‘Metro’ to ‘Blueface Da Bus,’ then left a collection of unsolicited feedback, a few of which contained profanities.
One of many posts left by the hacker learn: “okay critical query. are we a great bus station or are we ass [sic].”
One other submit learn “anybody right here have boobs lol,” whereas others mentioned booties.
The hacker then supplied to share the login credentials for the account with different customers, posting: “anybody need the login I am drained.”
Shortly after Blueface started turning WMATA’s Twitter account blue, the Twitter account of @Metrorailinfo was reportedly taken over by an unauthorized social gathering. The hack got here after Metrorail Information account warned its followers that the @wmata account had been hacked and so they should not comply with it.
The @MetrorailInfo hacker posed as a disgruntled social media supervisor, posting: “we ain’t hacked I simply hate being a social media supervisor for a F—ING BUS TWITTER.”
The transit authority instructed ABC7 Information that it was investigating the safety incident to find out who was behind the hack.
“We’re conscious that Metro’s Twitter accounts @WMATA @MetrorailInfo have been hacked and obscene posts have been made that don’t symbolize Metro’s group or tradition,” mentioned WMATA in a assertion to ABC7 Information on Monday morning.
“The posts might be eliminated, and our account might be secured. We’re working to know who could also be accountable for this breach.”
By 6.00am on Monday, WMATA had regained management of the account and deleted the hacker’s posts. The Metrorail Information was secured on Monday afternoon.
One Twitter person, calling themselves FIXWMATA, commented on the assault: “Only a pleasant reminder: maybe suppose twice earlier than entrusting your bank card info to a transit system that may’t even safe their very own Twitter account.”
WMATA has confronted criticism just lately after greater than half its rolling inventory was recalled over a flaw that triggered a derailment.