Variety’s email hacked, fake messages sent to readers
The hacking group responsible for breaking into the social media accounts of a number of high-profile tech executives took aim at a different kind of target on Saturday: Variety.
Early Saturday afternoon a number of people took to social media to report that emails coming from an apparently hacked Variety email account were making it into their inboxes.
Although the company’s site and social media accounts, which typically report on Hollywood news, appeared unaffected, the email screenshots from many Variety contacts offered proof that unusual messaging was being delivered on behalf of the media company.
That message was accompanied by a message on the company’s site:
You may have received one or more emails from Variety with the subject line #Ourmine.Variety did not send those emails; please ignore and delete them. We are working diligently to contain the matter and will update you when the issues have been resolved.
To date, the OurMine group has been responsible for hacking the social media accounts of tech executives including Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, Google CEOSundar Pichai, and, most recently, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. This appears to be one of the first times the group has targeted a major media site.
