A lot of celebrities had their social media accounts hacked this week. Like, a whole lot! The attacks appear to be largely unrelated, though several of them were apparently spurred by the recent LinkedIn and Myspace password dumps. If you wonder if the way in which we manage passwords is terrible: yes, it is. It’s so bad that even Mark Zuckerberg fell this week to apparent poor password hygiene. From untimely deaths, to truthers, to stoking the flames of the Great Katy Perry–Taylor Swift War, here’s this week’s power rankings of the most notable, ahem, repurposings of celebrity accounts.
1. The NFL
The hack: Roger Goodell, we hardly knew ye. Wait, no, that’s not right. The opposite.
Scorecard: On the one hand, brand accounts are more challenging to secure than personal accounts: multiple people usually have access to them, opening opportunity for leaks or misdeeds, and useful security tools like two-factor authentication are often impractical to implement. On the other, boy, there sure didn’t seem to be much grieving while news of Goodell’s demise still stood. According to lore, when Alfred Nobel read the joyous response to the erroneous announcement of his death, he was shamed into establishing the Nobel Prize for the betterment of mankind. Your move, Roger.
2. Kylie Jenner
The hack: The intruder fanned the flames of the Katy Perry–Taylor Swift battle royale. Last week, Perry was hacked; her account tweeted at Swift to tell her she missed her, which, given the massive, burning chasm that opened up across the United States several years ago, is probably not true. Jenner’s seized account doubled down: “Miss u both @taylorswift13 @katyperry.” Robo-Kylie also tweeted some suggestive language at Justin Bieber, and claimed she had made a sex tape with Tyga, but unfortunately, it was not very good (“well my sex tape with tyga was trash”).
Scorecard: Jenner quickly took to Snapchat to confirm the hack and deny that a sex tape exists. Her impostor seemed to soon get drunk on power, jumping between cleverly inflaming the Perry-Swift war to writing messages that left no doubt that the account had been hacked (“i love being so famous with no talent”; and ye olde hacker standby, “pwned”).
3. Lana Del Rey
The hack: Lana Del Rey’s visitor made the singer sound eerily similar to Microsoft’s Tay, an innocuous chatbot that transformed into a promiscuous, bigoted deviant within 24 hours of opening communication with Twitter users. “Bush did 911,” Lana Del Rey’s account wrote. “Lana del GAY.” Wait. Lana Del Tay. Is Lana actually artificial intelligence? Has she been all along? Have we made her into what she is today?
Scorecard: Let’s hear it for the 2016-est of all possible hacks.
4. Mark Zuckerberg
The hack: Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts were hijacked Sunday; a single tweet was posted to point out the conquest.
Scorecard: His password, reportedly, was “dadada.” As Molly McHugh writes, that news, coupled with the fact that the likely culprit was Zuckerberg using the same password across social media accounts, suggests that the Facebook CEO is just as bad at passwords as the rest of us. Zuck, my man, not to be like, “this is your job,” but…
5. Jack Black/Tenacious D
The hack: Tenacious D’s account tweeted Sunday that Jack Black was dead at age 46.
Scorecard: It’s great to hear that Jack Black didn’t die. It’s even greater to hear that Jack Black is still a person who exists!
6. Yankees rookie Rob Refsnyder
The hack: Refsnyder’s account was used to tweet several lewd things before the intruder invited the second baseman to take it back: “ROBERT I DIDNT CHANGE UR EMAIL TAKE UR DAMN TWITTER BACK”.
Scorecard: Refsnyder himself referred to the trespasser as “a nice hacker,” which, hey, I guess they were! Nice hacker, have a cookie.
7. Drake
The hack: Drake got off relatively easy, with the invader, “Aiden,” mostly promoting his personal accounts.
Scorecard: Aiden told Gizmodo he was able to get in because Drizzy used a nearly identical password for Twitter as he did for his recently hacked Myspace. I cannot confirm that Myspace is Drake’s social medium of choice, but few things have ever sounded so totally right.
