Hacked Twitter spreads false Tsunami warning

Indonesian gov advisor's account used for badness

Tiresome miscreants broke into the Twitter account of an Indonesian government advisor on Thursday to spread false warnings of an impending Tsunami.

Andi Arief, the Indonesian president disaster management advisor, has posted genuine warnings about earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions hitting the Asian country over recent months. More than 8,000 people following his updates were confronted by a message on Thursday suggesting a Tsunami would hit Jakarta on Friday.

The bogus message was posted to the account after the bad guys gained control of the micro-blogging update, probably either by guessing the password or via a phishing attack. Arief set up a new account to deny the false rumours while he sought to regain control of his previous account, a process that took some hours.

The Jakarta Globe has more details on the micro-blogging hack here.

Additional security commentary on the incident from net security firm Sophos can be found here. ®