Burger King's Twitter Feed Hacked

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Burger King is the latest victim of Twitter hacking. With its page image turned into a McDonald's logo, the company suffered embarrassment for an hour before Twitter closed down the account.

  Burger King Twitter

Within this time, the hacker offended Burger King employees, promoted a musician, and claimed that the company had been sold to McDonald's. The first tweet was, "We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you." Another tweet read, "We caught one of our employees in the bathroom doing this..." with a photo of someone shooting a syringe into his arm.

During the incident, @McDonald's tweeted, "We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking."

Burger King shared this statement with Mashable:

  Burger King response

When Burger King regained control of its Twitter feed, the writer acknowledged the thousands of new followers and tweeted, "Interesting day here at Burger King, but we're back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!"

Meanwhile, Twitter is under fire for so many recent hacks. In response, the site may institute two-factor authentication, which requires a user to respond to a text message before gaining access to the account from a mobile device. Facebook, Google, and Dropbox already have similar processes in place.

Discussion Starters:

  • How do you think the hacking occurred? Where might Burger King have vulnerabilities in its Twitter feed or process?
  • How do you assess Burger King's response? What, if anything, could the company have done differently?