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WWE social media accounts hacked ahead of the Royal Rumble

| Jan 30, 2017 09:20 PM EST

Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns celebrate their victory at the WWE SummerSlam 2015 at Barclays Center of Brooklyn on August 23, 2015 in New York City.

The WWE is having one of its busiest weekends ever with the NXT: Takeover live show and the Royal Rumble pay-per-view occurring within 24 hours of each other. Because of this, the WWE has taken heightened measures to promote their events on social media in an attempt to increase viewership. However, they might have a problem doing so after the company's Twitter accounts were hacked.

Notorious hacker group OurMine claimed responsibility for the hacks, stating that they were simply testing the security for the WWE's accounts. However, they have been known to use hacks to promote their commercial services. The hack on the WWE closely resembled the one the group managed to pull off against Netflix last year.

"We just hacked it using the head of the WWE social media account," a representative for OurMine told Mashable via email. The representative for the hacker group added that the account of WWE's social media head is actually linked to those of all WWE Superstars, both for Twitter and Facebook. This, they claimed, was what made the hacking of multiple WWE-affiliated social media accounts easier than expected.

The now-deleted tweets lasted for approximately an hour before they were taken down. The WWE has released an official statement about the infiltration of their social media accounts, saying that they have now been re-secured. A source also claimed that the hacks did not have any impact on the wrestling promotion from a business standpoint.

Aside from their Twitter accounts, the WWE's official Tumblr page was also compromised. A post similar to the ones found on the WWE's Twitter accounts were posted on it. In spite of the fact that this has raised security concerns for the WWE's PR department, they should not feel that bad because OurMine has also hacked the accounts of some of the biggest tech figures in recent memory.

In the past, they have hacked into the accounts of the founders and creators of Wikipedia, Twitter, and Pokemon Go respectively, Complex reported. In addition to these hacks they also managed to pull one off against Mark Zuckerberg, when they compromised his Pinterest account for a brief period of time. 

Watch the WWE championship match between John Cena and AJ Styles at the 2017 Royal Rumble here:

 

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