Donald Trump Jr.’s account on X (formerly Twitter) was hacked on Wednesday morning. The account published a post that falsely claimed that his father, former president Donald Trump, had passed away.
“I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away,” the post read. “I will be running for president in 2024.” Andrew Surabian, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a post on X that the claim was false and that Trump Jr.’s account had been hacked.
The account also posted a string of other strange posts, including one saying, “This just in: North Korea is about to get smoked,” while another said, “When I become president I’m going to burn the SEC,” referring to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The posts remained on the platform for around 30 minutes before they were removed. It is currently unknown if X removed the post, or if Trump Jr.’s team regained access to the account and removed them.
TechCrunch could not find a page on X about security and privacy for high-profile accounts. The link to the social media giant’s safety and security help page for compromised accounts also no longer exists, and instead tells users “sorry, this page doesn’t exist.”
X did not respond immediately to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The social media giant’s press email sent an automated message that reads: “Busy now, please check back later.”
The hijacking of Trump Jr.’s account is one of the more high-profile security incidents since Elon Musk took the reins of the company in October 2022. Earlier this year, the company broke its silence over an alleged data breach that exposed the contact information of millions of users in December 2022. Twitter said that after conducting a “thorough investigation,” it found “no evidence” that the data sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter’s systems.
It’s worth noting that security at the platform was an issue even before Musk took over. Today’s incident comes three years after a number of high-profile Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Apple, Musk and Joe Biden, were hacked by attackers to spread a cryptocurrency scam.
Former president Trump’s then-Twitter account was hacked in 2020 by a security researcher who guessed Trump’s password. Dutch officials, who confirmed the incident months later, declined to prosecute the researcher for acting in good-faith.