Sony is the latest company to become the victim of hackers, as the company’s Twitter account was compromised on Monday to tweet fake news about Britney Spears’ death.
“Britney Spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon. #RIPBritney,” the message posted on Twitter by the official account of Sony Music Global read.
Shortly after that, the official account of singer Bob Dylan was also hacked, most likely by the same group, to post a tweet reading “Rest in peace @britneyspears.”
The tweets, which are no longer available at the moment of writing this article because both Sony and Bob Dylan account administrators took back control of the Twitter handles and removed the posts, included a third message acknowledging the hack.
“We saw a new IP logged into the account a few minutes ago and the tweet is posted by a new IP so @britneyspears is still alive,” this message read.
A Britney Spears spokeswoman explained that the singer was still alive and even tweeted photos of her and her children. “There have been a few Internet clowns over the years who have made similar claims about her death, but never from the official Sony Music Twitter account,” Britney Spears’ manager Adam Leber told CNN.
Sony has also acknowledged the hack and issued a very short statement to apologise to Britney Spears and her fans for the posted tweets. “Sony Music Entertainment’s Twitter account was compromised. This has been rectified. Sony Music apologises to Britney Spears and her fans for any confusion,” the statement reads.
The hacking group behind this new hoax is OurMine, who also managed to compromise some other high-profile accounts in the last few weeks, including those belonging to Netflix, Marvel, and others. In all cases, however, OurMine only posted tweets to taunt companies’ security measures, so the millions of followers who saw the messages were never at risk.