San Francisco - Xinhua
A Twitter social media network account of Netflix Inc., a video streaming service based in Silicon Valley, was hacked Wednesday morning by a self-proclaimed "white hat" hacker group.
Netflix's U.S. account with nearly 2.5 million Twitter followers was left with several messages, including the one claiming "Hey, it's OurMine. Don't worry we are just testing your security." The messages since have been deleted, presumably by Netflix.
The hacking by OurMine, reportedly by exploiting a Netflix staff member's account, had nothing to do with operations of the entertainment content provider headquartered in Los Gatos, Northern California, and its subscribers, more than 86 million of them worldwide and 47 million in the United States as of October 2016.
Netflix has not formally responded to the incident.
Previously, OurMine targeted social media accounts of high-profile technology industry figures such as Facebook chief executive officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
On its website, OurMine identifies itself as "an elite hacker group known for many hacks showing vulnerabilities in major systems" and it has "no bad intentions and only care(s) about the security and privacy of your accounts and network."
Claiming that members of the group are "professional hackers and vulnerability assessors," OurMine promotes on the website its "services" to secure potential customers' emails at 10 U.S. dollars for each address, social media accounts at 30 dollars each, and websites at 1,000 dollars.
source: Xinhua