The X account of Nigeria’s foremost investigative newspaper, PREMIUM TIMES, has been hacked by a company marketing crypto.
The social media account with over 2 million followers came under attack in the early hours of Wednesday as the hackers who took over the microblogging handle of the newspaper continue to post various issues outside journalism.
The page has since been sharing a medium link captioned ‘Ripple is breaking barriers! The future of finance is here! $XRP #XRP $RLUSD #RLUSD #HODL #Crypto #Blockchain $Ripple #Ripple’.
Confirming the development, the newspaper in a statement published on its website said “at about 3:00 GMT, our X account was hacked. We are currently reviewing how the hacker was able to bypass our Two-Factor Authentication to gain access. We are also working to gain complete access to our account as quickly as possible.”
Since billionaire Elon Musk took over the affairs of X, users have been complaining about the lengthy time it takes to resolve issues that deal with hacking. He has laid off a significant number of workers, especially in customer service and fact check departments.
While PREMIUM TIMES’ Editor-in-Chief, Musikilu Mojeed, said the newspaper had contacted the X help desk, the handle remained under the control of the hackers at the time of this report.
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) condemns the attack on the investigative newspaper’s X handle and expresses our support to the news organisation at this difficult period. We urge the security agencies in Nigeria to track down and bring the perpetrators to justice while encouraging all media organisations to continue to bolster their cyber security.
