Texarkana Gazette

McDonald’s got Twitter bump after hacked account insulted Trump, expert says

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CHICAGO—McDonald’s said its main Twitter account was hacked Thursday morning, resulting in an insulting tweet directed at President Donald Trump.

A tweet posted after 8 a.m. Central Time Thursday on McDonald’s main account, @McDonaldsC­orp, called out the president, calling him a “disgusting excuse of a President” along with a judgment of his hand size. The tweet, which has since been removed, was online for about 20 minutes. It was pinned to the top of McDonald’s Twitter feed for a period of time.

About an hour later, McDonald’s said in a tweet that Twitter had informed the fast-food giant that its account had been compromise­d.

“We deleted the tweet, secured our account and are now investigat­ing this,” the tweet said.

A spokesman for Twitter said the social media site doesn’t comment on individual accounts. Other Twitter users responded to the original McDonald’s tweet, with some joking that they would visit McDonald’s more as a result.

Kellan Terry, a senior data analyst for BrandWatch, a company that provides social media insights, said the tweet caused McDonald’s Twitter mentions to spike more than 150 percent.

About two-thirds of the mentions showing emotion were positive.

“Big Macs are starting to trend within the McDonald’s conversati­on as people are either saying they are buying a Big Mac today to mark the occasion, or they wonder if Trump supporters will now ‘cut Big Macs from their diet,’” Terry said.

Terry doesn’t believe the tweet will have an impact on McDonald’s beyond the next few days. But security experts say it should be a lesson to corporatio­ns to better secure their increasing­ly important social media presence.

On Wednesday, hundreds of prominent Twitter accounts—from celebritie­s like Justin Beiber to news organizati­ons including Forbes—were hacked. The hackers, which are believed to have gained access through a third-party app that analyzes Twitter followers, changed the users’ background photos to one of the Turkish flag and sent out political messages in Turkish.

Jack Koziol, president and founder of InfoSec Institute, an Elmwood Park, Ill.based informatio­n security training company, said Twitter account hacks like the McDonald’s incident primarily are done through “phishing scams” where the hacker figures out who owns the corporate Twitter account through public informatio­n (a LinkedIn profile, for example) and then sends a password reset email to the person. If that person clicks on the email, he or she can inadverten­tly give a password, and therefore access, to a hacker.

“The two best ways to prevent this are via two-factor authentica­tion and education,” Koziol said in an email. Two-factor authentica­tion can be set up by any account, corporate or personal, and requires a verificati­on code sent to a phone number, in addition to a password, to log on. Education, he said, includes being knowledgea­ble and diligent about how to keep your personal informatio­n and your social media accounts safe.

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