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Hackers may have used Mark Zuckerberg’s stolen LinkedIn password to hack his Twitter account

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles during an announcement at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles during an announcement at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File

Mark Zuckerberg may be the CEO of Facebook, but that doesn’t mean his Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest accounts are safe from the same sort of annoying hacking attempts his users face every day.

A hacker group named “OurMine,” took responsibility for hacking Zuckerberg’s lesser known accounts, including his Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts.

READ MORE: How to protect yourself from security breaches on social media sites

However Zuckerberg’s Facebook account – the account he is most active on publicly – was not targeted; according to a report by Engadget, hackers tried to access his Instagram account, but did not get past the app’s security features.

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According to screenshots obtained by Engadget, hackers claimed they were able to access Zuckerberg’s accounts thanks to a recently released database of passwords and user names stemming from the 2012 LinkedIn hack. Last month, security researcher Troy Hunt revealed over 164 million LinkedIn email addresses and passwords had been exposed from that breach.

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http://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/739605948218671104

It’s important to note the accounts hackers managed to access appear to be old, rarely used accounts – for example, Zuckerberg hasn’t used his Twitter account since 2012 – and it’s unlikely that Zuckerberg uses the same login information for his current accounts.

However, it serves as an important reminder that hackers can target you if you are using an old password on multiple social media sites.

In the case of a data breach, if you used the same password for multiple accounts you should always make sure to change that password across all accounts – not just the one that was affected by the data breach. Moving forward, try not to use the same password for any two accounts.

Zuckerberg has not commented about the hacking attempts on any of his current social media accounts.

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