Essex police have launched a review of their online security after hackers hijacked their Twitter account and potentially directed thousands of the force’s online followers to an “offensive” picture.
The force apologised to its 108,924 Twitter followers after the rogue tweet was sent out by a hacker on Friday morning.
In a statement it said: “The tweet included a link which took users to an offensive picture.”
We apologise for previous tweet re #CyberAware; it was malicious & has been deleted - please do not click on the link that was in the tweet.
— Essex Police (@EssexPoliceUK) October 23, 2015
It advised anyone who clicked on the link to run a security check on their computer. “Our initial assessment of the site hosting the picture is that it is not running any malware but any users who visited the site are advised to run their security software to ensure their computers have not been infected,” the statement said.
“An investigation is now being carried out to establish how our account security was breached and steps have already been taken to prevent a recurrence.”
The rogue tweet was left on the network for at least 40 minutes before the police realised the account had been hacked. An anonymous Twitter user recorded the offending tweet in a screengrab before it was deleted.
@gabyhinsliff passwords changed & security reviewed, Gaby. Valuable lesson for us all.
— Essex Police (@EssexPoliceUK) October 23, 2015
The force said it had learnt a “valuable lesson”.
The incident comes soon after the financial details of up to 4 million customers of the mobile network TalkTalk were compromised by a “significant and sustained” cyber-attack.
