John McAfee, the maverick founding father of McAfee Associates, has claimed his Twitter account was hacked, regardless of him utilizing two-factor authentication to guard his account
McAfee stated attackers shared cryptocurrency options and made them look his personal suggestions, which he repeatedly tweeted to his followers. When replies on Twitter prompted him to activate the service’s native two-factor authentication, he confirmed proof of his cellphone being allegedly hacked, and the 2FA code intercepted by the hackers.
Whereas McAfee earned fame for his function in McAfee’s profitable antivirus and pc safety firm, he’s additionally notoriously flaky and is thought to have been concerned in a couple of confrontation with regulation enforcement. So it’s not as if he’s an unlikely goal for hackers.
At the moment, he’s concerned with a bitcoin mining firm, and was tweeting “Coin of the Day” tricks to his followers frequently. This was additionally the main focus of the alleged hack on his account. The hacked tweets began sharing cryptocurrency options after which McAfee needed to announce that he wouldn’t be doing these posts any longer.
In line with BBC Information, McAfee’s coin suggestions typically led to spikes in worth for these property, which explains one doable purpose behind the hack. The tweets for these ‘rogue cash’ have since been deleted, and McAfee alerted his followers concerning the hack as nicely.
Pressing: My account was hacked. Twitter has been notified. The coin of the day tweet was not me. As you all know… I’m not doing a coin of the day anymore!!!!
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) December 27, 2017
As of now, no group or particular person has taken duty for the hack. One hypothesis is it is the work of bots seeking to drive particular cryptocurrency values up or down.
As for the alleged 2FA breach, McAfee tweeted, “The primary indication that I had been hacked was turning on my mobile phone. There was an error message, and I knew at that time that my cellphone had been compromised. All that the hacker did was compromise my Twitter account. It might have been worse.” He tweeted that with the beneath picture:
In case you aren’t aware of this idea, two-factor authentication requires an individual to enter a code despatched to a cell phone along with the password to entry an account.
McAfee believes the hacker intercepted the code for his login, which might be stunning and a much bigger breach of safety than a Twitter account being hacked. He additionally added that he had since then eliminated two-factor authentication from all of his accounts as a precaution.
Whether or not McAfee is appearing famously paranoid or whether or not certainly he’s the goal of attackers, we are going to discover out extra within the subsequent few days. Until then tell us what safety measures you employ to guard your social media accounts.
