Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan’s Facebook account was hacked on September 5 and what ensued was a hilarious turn of events. The hacker, who seems to be a boy in his early twenties, after hacking the account, replaced the actor’s profile picture with one of his own. He then proceeded to go live on his Facebook feed before the session got terminated.
The actor was notified of this unusual activity minutes after the online session went live. More than 2500 people were part of this live session. Following this, the account was pulled down and the actor confirmed that his account was hacked. In his post, he said that “an enterprising individual” had hacked his page and it has been taken care of.
There has been an out-pour of responses from his fans, ranging from ludicrous to downright absurd. Some expressed their concerns and some their happiness over the recovery.
Many celebrities have borne the brunt of online hacking in the recent times. Just last month, superstar Rajinikanth’s Twitter account was hacked. An unknown techie, whose apparent intention was to trend the hashtag #HitToKill, hacked the actor’s account. The infiltrator during the takeover, also followed a number of celebrities including Pa.Ranjith, Aamir Khan, producer Thanu etc. After the recovery, these accounts were unfollowed covertly.
While incidents of online hacking are sparse in India, an alarming number of Hollywood celebrities have fallen victim to this act. In June this year, a horde of celebrities accounts were compromised. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Katy Perry, Drake, Kylie Jenner are some of the celebrity accounts which were hacked. For the complete list, click here.
A leading American news website approached a hacker to gain intel on this dangerous trend. On conversation, it was found that their hacking methods are so startlingly simple that they seem a bit dubious. The hacker revealed that he used the elementary ‘search and get’ technique to gain entry into their accounts. “I search their Myspace username in LeakedSource, and their info comes up,- Email, password, username,” he said.
In May 2016, Myspace announced that in a massive hack incident, more than 360 Million Myspace accounts were compromised. Although Myspace had invalidated the passwords of the affected users, the information regarding their usernames, passwords, and email addresses are still publicly available.
LeakedSource.com is a website which hosts and compiles information from every major website security breach over the last few years. The website boasts of more than two billions hacked accounts. The hacker now only needs to pay 76 cents to the website to get access to these information. And he simply needs to repeat the passwords to hack into their accounts, provided they maintain the same password for all their accounts.
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Another much debated leak was the 2014 icloud leak, infamously called ‘The Fappening’. Still a thorn in the Hollywood fraternity, many celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Brie Larson were victims of this unprecedented attack. A collection of more than 500 private pictures of celebrities, including some containing nudity were disseminated through various portals. After rigorous rounds of investigation, in March 2016, 36-year-old Ryan Collins was found guilty of the attack. He revealed that he ‘phished’ his victims by sending mails which are identical to the ones generated by Apple or Google. Once the victims entered their account details, the hacker gained access to their accounts and invariably their icloud account also.
The growing ‘Hacker culture’ predominantly thrives on exploiting weaknesses in technology and security. While for many, it’s purely an intellectual pursuit, some are here just for the thrill. Understanding and exploiting the complexities of technology give pleasure to these masterminds and pose an enticing challenge to them. But lately, there is also another class of hackers who are seeking to make revenue through their actions. Recently Indian model Arti Venkatesh brough to light a similar Instagram hacking incident. According to her, her instagram account was hacked from someone in Saudi Arabia and she was demanded $120 for the ‘safe return’ of her account.
She explains her ordeal in this YouTube video: