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  • Hackers Turn Burger King’s Tweet Stream Into A Whopper Of A Mess

    John Biggs

    Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

    Monday, February 18th, 2013
    Comments
    Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 12.39.51 PM

    About 40 minutes ago hackers took over the official Burger King Twitter account, changing the branding to feature McDonald’s fish nuggets prominently on the top and noting that Burger King “just got sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped =[ FREDOM IS FAILURE℠."

    I would recommend checking it out now before it's taken down.

    The last official tweet happened at 12pm on February 17 while the hack began at 12:01 on the 18th.

    Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 12.52.28 PMThe account also points to a missing press release that seems to have been placed on Burger King's official website, suggesting a fairly bold and sweeping hack. The hack seems to be the work of an Anonymous group and is called #OPMadCow.

    Users are jumping and and posting responses while the hackers are posting things like "Try our new BK(℠) Bath Salt! 99% Pure MDPV! Buy a Big Mac, get a gram free! @dfnctsc @tshyne @mcdonalds." TShyne is a musician and "innovator."

    I have a line in to Burger King PR but I can assume that they are not, in fact, lovin' it.