Obama’s Old White House Instagram Account Hacked
The Instagram account for the Obama White House was hacked, TMZ reported Sunday. The @obamawhitehouse account posted, among other things, an AI-generated image with the caption, “The White House is under Shiites’ control.” The account has not been updated since 2017 and has not issued any statement on the incident.
Obama’s Twitter account was previously hacked in July 2020. In that same attack, the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Joe Biden were also compromised. The accounts for Gates and Musk, along with Kanye West’s account, promoted bitcoin payments to followers.
At the time, the FBI told NBC News it was aware of a “security incident involving several Twitter accounts belonging to high profile individuals” and said the hackers appeared to be trying to “perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud.” It also warned the public not to “fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident.”
Jeff Bezos’s also saw his account hacked then, and the Amazon founder’s account reportedly promised to “give back to my community,” according to the perpetrators of the attack. Twitter, now known as X, said then, “We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly.”
In 2014, the Washington Post reported that hackers believed to be working for the Russian government had accessed some unclassified White House computer systems. A White House official said at the time, “In the course of assessing recent threats, we identified activity of concern on the unclassified Executive Office of the President network.” The official added, “We took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity.”
