Twitter Account of Pokémon Go Creator Hacked

OurMine is back in the news again. The group which claims to test and protect mission-critical network and social media security has hacked into the Twitter account of Niantic CEO and Pokémon Go creator John Hanke.

Hashtagged as "OurMine" it claimed that the hack was for Brazil, where Pokémon Go is yet to be released.

One tweet also claimed that Hanke's password was "nopass.”

The hack seems like a marketing stunt, directing users to upgrade account security. Nevertheless, it has gained attention of the Pokémon Go players and the world media alike.

In the past the hacking group has gained notoriety by hacking into the social media accounts of technology executives from Jack Dorsey (Vine), Mark Zuckerberg to Sundar Pichai (Quora).

Pokémon Go has been targeted before as well when the group initiated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on their servers last month. A DDoS attack floods a server with traffic so that it can’t be accessed by legitimate users. One week before Verizon-owned prominent technology site TechCrunch was breached by OurMine hacking group. The group gained publishing access to the site and posted, “Hello Guys, don’t worry we are just testing techcrunch security, we didn’t change any passwords, please contact us.”

Later, the post was promoted as a ticker, the top banner in red and a the main story on TechCrunch’s front page.

Service listings by the group on ourmine.org

According to OurMine the reason behind such attacks is to make people aware of the importance of using strong passwords. The group also offers various services ranging from account scanning to corporate network security. It is believed that the group is based in Saudi Arabia and is comprised of 4 to 5 people.