An unusual incident has brought a serious headache to the British authorities. According to web applications security specialists, about a week ago, an unidentified hacker or hacker group compromised the Twitter account of the London Metropolitan Police, better known as Scotland Yard. Hackers posted some tweets with messages against policemen.
Most of the tweets posted by hackers refer to
the British rapper Digga D, whose real name is Rhys Herbert. The rapper was
imprisoned a year ago along with four gang members because they planned to
attack another gang armed with baseball bats and machetes. Herbert was only 17
at the time. “Release Digga D,” one of the messages mentions.
Roy Smith, Chief of Police in London, said:
“We are aware that our Twitter account has been compromised; our web
application security experts are working after hours to eliminate messages posted
by the attack operators and ensure that this does not happen again. Please
ignore any postings from this account until further notice.”
As he’s used to, U.S. President Donald Trump
took this incident as an opportunity to criticize the work of the authorities
in London, specifically attacking Mayor Sadiq Khan; “The streets of London
will never be secure with that incompetent mayor,” Trump posted on his
Twitter account.
Web application security experts reported that
some hours later the London Police website had also been hacked, altering the
content of the news feed and the institution’s email. Scotland
Yard says this is not an attack on its IT infrastructure, as only the
police online press office was affected. This service is provided to the London
Police by MyNewsDesk, which automatically distributes the content generated by
Scotland Yard to its website and Twitter account.
According to the specialists from the
International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), the authorities regained
access and control of the compromised services last Saturday night.
