Hackers target social media accounts of news magazine, airline

Twitter account of the microblogging site's chief financial officer also fired off spam

SAN FRANCISCO/ WASHINGTON: Hackers struck at a number of social media accounts on Tuesday, infiltrating and posting unauthorised content on the twitter accounts of Newsweek magazine and Twitter’s chief financial officer and embarrassing posts on Delta Airline’s Facebook page.

Pro-IS hacker hijacks Newsweek’s Twitter feed

Newsweek's Twitter feed was briefly hijacked by hackers who displayed messages supporting the Islamic State group.

The feed showed images similar to those from the hacking of the social media feed of the US Central Command last month.

The account showed a picture of a hooded figure and the words "Cyber Caliphate" along with the message "Je Suis IS," a response to the "Je Suis Charlie" messages following the deadly attacks at French weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Newsweek, a publication now owned by IBT Media, said the account was taken over for about 14 minutes before Twitter returned control to the news organisation.

"We can confirm that Newsweek's Twitter account was hacked this morning, and have since regained control of the account," Newsweek managing editor Kira Bindrim said in a statement.

"We apologise to our readers for anything offensive that might have been sent from our account during that period, and are working to strengthen our newsroom security measures going forward."

Twitter users noticed the anomaly, and saw the account appeared to have been restored a short time later, with an empty "egg" image in place of its customary logo.

Later, the White House said the FBI was probing the hack. Hackers had posted tweets containing threats to President Barack Obama's family.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that "this particular intrusion is one that is already being investigated by the FBI," without elaborating.

Delta Airline’s facebook page hacked for obscene content on

While Newsweek’s Twitter account was hacked to post pro-IS tweets, Delta’s Facebook page was seemingly hacked to post objectionable content, Business Insider reported.

About an hour after the initial post, a second obscene link was posted. Shortly thereafter, though, Delta removed both the links and posted an apology via its Twitter account, saying its page was compromised.

The @Delta Facebook page was compromised. We sincerely apologize for the unauthorized, objectionable content that was posted.

— Delta News Hub (@DeltaNewsHub) February 10, 2015

The offensive content posted on the @Delta Facebook page has been removed. We apologize and are investigating.

— Delta News Hub (@DeltaNewsHub) February 10, 2015

Twitter exec's account fires off spam posts

An official Twitter account for the company's chief financial officer unleashed a barrage of spam posts on Tuesday in what may have been either a hack or a glitch.

Anthony Noto's account @anthonynoto for a brief time fired off terse, slangy missives inviting people to click on a link that promised funny video or other reward, depending on the post.

The posts were quickly removed by Twitter.

"His account was sending spam Tweets," a Twitter spokesperson told AFP. "We've locked the account down and deleted the Tweets."

There was no indication any of Noto's account information was accessed, according to the spokesperson.

Rogue posts in Twitter accounts could be the work of hackers, but they could also be caused by bugs in third-party applications intended to work with the one-to-many messaging service, according to the San Francisco-based company.

The account compromises came the same day the US administration announced the launch of a new cyber intelligence center which aims to integrate information about threats to critical computer networks.