Attackers Compromise Twitter Account of Scotland Yard

• The hackers also targeted emails and news pages of the Metropolitan Police Service.
• The internal IT infrastructure of the police organization is reportedly not affected by the attack.

The official Twitter account of the UK’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) was hacked by miscreants last week. The hackers posted a series of tweets from this account referencing jailed British rapper Rhys Herbert, also known as Digga D. These tweets called for the release of the rapper. In addition to that, the MPS stated that the hackers targeted its emails and news pages.

MPS, metonymically known as Scotland Yard, has around 1.22 million followers on Twitter.

The big picture

• In a statement, MPS stated that its internal IT infrastructure was not affected in the attack.
• The issue was from its press office’s online provider, MyNewsDesk. It is speculated that hackers gained access to the MyNewsDesk account of Met Police.
• Apart from tweets, unauthorized messages also appeared on the news section of the MPS website.
• Upon discovery, MPS took down all these unsolicited messages both from Twitter and its news page.

Worth noting

The tweets specifically called for the release of Digga D and castigated the police. The rapper was jailed last year along with four other persons after he was about to engage in an attack.

Access restrictions for provider

After the incident, the MPS has hinted at setting access restrictions for the service provider MyNewsDesk.

“We apologise to our subscribers and followers for the messages they have received. We are confident the only security issue relates to access to our MyNewsDesk account. We have begun making changes to our access arrangements to MyNewsDesk,” the MPS said in a statement.