OurMine hacks Buzzfeed in retaliation for publishing details of alleged member

By Rob Thubron on October 6, 2016, 12:30 PM




You may be familiar with the name OurMine. The group has been responsible for several high-profile hacks of celebrities and some of the most famous CEOs in the tech industry, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Uber’s Travis Kalanick. Now, the hackers have hit BuzzFeed in retaliation for an article that exposed one of its alleged members.

Joseph Bernstein’s investigation identified Saudi teenager Ahmed Makki as a member of OurMine. The group denied this, claiming he was “just a fan,” but the story appears to have touched a nerve – BuzFeed was hacked the morning after the report, with the titles of several articles changed to “Hacked by OurMine.”

The body of several stories, including Bernstein’s, had the following text added: “Don’t share fake news about us again, we have your database. Next time it will be public. Don’t f**k with OurMine again.”

It’s unclear precisely what database the group is referring to, or what information it contains, though an email to The Guardian from an account associated with the hackers claims it was “Emails, Password Hashes, Usernames.”

There has been no comment from Makki, but OurMine’s website states: “Yesterday Buzzfeed Created a post that we are only 1 member called Ahmed Makki, and we can confirm that we don’t Have a member called ‘Ahmed Makki’ and we are now 4 we were 3 but someone joined, and we hacked it because they are reporting fake news about us.”

“We have a member known as ‘Makki’ But not ahmad makki, and he is not from Saudi Arabia.”

BuzzFeed quickly restored the affected articles, including the original OurMine exposé, back to their original state.

OurMine said the only reason it infiltrates accounts is to show that nobody is secure, using the exposure to advertise its services so people can stay “safe from other hackers.”