British politicians and international organisations had their accounts on X hacked on Wednesday evening.
Several MPs, including Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Labour MPs Chris Elmore and Carolyn Harris, shared the same message on the social network. Although the messages were quickly deleted, they were still readable on TweetDeck, a control panel used to manage accounts on X, formerly Twitter.
The messages, which also included a lengthy code, read: “THIS IS A HACKED ACCOUNT!!!! WE PRESENT HACKED ON SOLANA on every account we hack we publish the token address so we can boost it and make profit together.”
The message on the Justice Secretary’s account was posted at 7.53pm and had already been deleted by 7.55pm. It is not the first time a British politician’s account on the website has been hacked. Jeremy Corbyn’s Twitter account was hacked in 2016 when a series of expletive-laden tweets were posted.
One insulted the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, while another expressed opposition to the Trident nuclear defence programme.
Other accounts that posted the same message on Wednesday night included the World Health Organization, Great British Menu and the Indian branch of tech company Lenovo.
While many quickly deleted the hacked message, some remained visible for some time. British comedian and actress Sooz Kempner shared with X that her account was also hacked and that she had changed her password.