Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales’ Twitter Account Hacked By OurMine

Hacking collective OurMine has done it — again. The hackers compromised Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales’ Twitter account Saturday, reports said.

A tweet was sent out from Wales’ verified Twitter account that read, “RIP Jimmy Wales, 1966 – 2016.” The tweet immediately created waves online regarding the 50-year-old’s whereabouts and whether something had really happened to him.

A few minutes later another tweet was posted that read, “I confirm that Wikipedia is all lies, OurMine is the true.” The tweet also contained a link to a page with the OurMine logo advertising the group's social security services. In addition to the tweets, Wales’ biography on his Twitter profile was also changed to “hacked by OurMine.”

OurMine has previously hacked the social media accounts of several important personalities including Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey. The group exposed the victims’ weak passwords and their accounts’ poor security.

The group said that they use such high-profile hacks to advertise their “security services.” In fact, a member belonging to the hacking group insisted that it’s just promoting stronger security, claiming that if the group didn’t hack famous accounts someone else would. OurMine charges from $30 to $5,000 for its services.

The group also hit “Pokémon Go” login servers with a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack last month that left players frustrated and unable to log in to the game.

The tweets posted by the hackers were removed later and Wales’ biography was edited. He also tweeted saying that he was fine.