Twitter announced on Saturday that the official Twitter account of the Olympics and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) media Twitter account had been hacked and temporarily locked.
The accounts were hacked via a third-party platform, a spokesperson for the social media platform revealed in an emailed statement, without disclosing further details.
“As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners to restore them,” the Twitter spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the IOC separately said that the IOC was investigating the potential breach.
Twitter also said that Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona’s account had also faced a similar incident on Saturday.
“FC Barcelona will conduct a cybersecurity audit and will review all protocols and links with third party tools, in order to avoid such incidents,” the soccer club announced in a tweet after the hack.
In January, the official Twitter accounts of several U.S. National Football League (NFL) teams, including the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, were hacked a few days before of the Super Bowl.
Earlier this month, a number of Facebook’s official Twitter accounts were briefly compromised.
Source: Reuters
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