Council of Europe's Twitter hacked with coronavirus threats

Wednesday, March 11, 2020 

The Language associations and collaborative support network of the European Centre for Modern Languages belonging to the Council of Europe had its Twitter account (@LACSECML) taken over by a group of hackers on March 9th.

In it the hackers mentioned that the Muscovite metro stations of Dubrovka, Avtozavodskaya Central Circle station, the famous Russian landmark Ostankino Tower, Paveletsky railway station and flights belonging to Russian national carrier "Aeroflot" and also the British Airways has been contaminated by them with COVID-19 virus, which is the viral agent of an ongoing global outbreak in which the WHO had declared a pandemic.

The hackers used the names of "Thomas Little Evil Utoyo", "Calton", "David Law" and "Thanthom" as tweet signatures while at the same time claiming that individuals with names of "Calvin Goh", "Hendy", "Gideon W", "Audentis", "Mister Eriee O", "Khengwin", "T-Zehang", "KC LING", "Le3p0ryuen", "Jayrulo" and "曾 家 顺" were involved in the alleged bioterrorist deeds. Moreover they threatened attacks against RKA Mission Control Center that is the mission control center of the Russian Federal Space Agency in the near future.

As of time of writing the tweets in question has not been taken down yet. Since the publication of this article the hackers had resume tweeting by stating that the RKA space mission control center will be affected 'in a few days'.

By now it looks like the same group of hackers had struck again, this time against taking over American Temple University's Twitter account (@InMotionTU) and then posted warnings on St Petersburg's Volkovskaya station by those with names with "S Teoh", "Ian Chew", "Mr Yiliang", "W. somboonsuk", "S Patcharaphon", "Victor pang", "jiangxin", "文_祥!", "Freddyisf0xy", "Masami", "Greg Galloway", "EncoreOngKai" and "Alteredd State", while additionally claiming that "Elmo Chong" and "Krully" had contaminated the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, USA. Furthermore it has been known that they had also hacked University of Georgia's Grady Newsource and US National Association of Women Business Owners websites in the same way although the hackers' text at the former has since been taken down.

This article has been updated