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Journalism of Courage
Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke became a target of self-proclaimed hacker group OurMine when his Twitter account was accessed by them. OurMine, in a series of tweets, confirmed the group had taken over Hanke’s account and also revealed his Twitter password. “His password was too easy “nopass” #OurMine !?” OurMine said in a tweet posted from Hanke’s account. There’s also Quora links in the tweets, which have been taken down. Clicking on the links takes us to a ‘Page not found’. In an earlier tweet, OurMine said, “Hey, it’s #OurMine , don’t worry we are just testing your security, visit our website to upgrade your security!?”
Niantic Labs CEO is the latest victim of OurMine, when it comes to hacking of social media accounts belonging to top Silicon Valley executives. The hacker group, recently hacked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Quara account and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts.
We’ve seen in the past that the executives whose accounts were hacked, gained control of the same within a short period deleting all messages posted by OurMine. However, in this case, the tweets which were posted on Hanke’s Twitter account almost 14 hours back can still be found online. This suggests either Hanke isn’t aware of the hack or he hasn’t gained full control of his account yet. However, we can’t say for sure.
Niantic Labs is the developer of popular Pokémon GO app. The mobile game, which was unveiled on July 6 has gained huge popularity worldwide. It was downloaded by millions across the world even when it was launched for a few countries, thanks to side-loading and APKs. A SurveyMonkey data survey claims Pokémon GO is the biggest mobile game in US history. Earlier data from SimilarWeb showed the game is bigger than Tinder when it came to total install base on Android phones in the US.
Check out the tweets posted by OurMine of Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke’s accounts:
https://twitter.com/johnhanke/status/759829147447361536
https://twitter.com/johnhanke/status/759821330065788928
https://twitter.com/johnhanke/status/759821540909260800
https://twitter.com/johnhanke/status/759823676426555393
https://twitter.com/johnhanke/status/759824188177805312
OurMine team claims it is focused on security. The hacker group says it brings out the flaws in security in user’s account by hacking in to them.
Interestingly when Pokémon GO was launched, privacy issues were raised because the game was getting full Google account access while logging in. However, Niantic Labs CEO clarified later the mobile game wasn’t collecting user’s data.
