Donald Trump Jr.'s X (formerly Twitter) account was allegedly hacked during the early hours of Wednesday. As per reports, the hacked account falsely tweeted that Trump Jr.'s father, Donald Trump, had died.
The tweet stated, 'I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024.' However, Trump seemed to prove that he was alive after he was seen posting an unrelated message on his own social media platform, Truth Social, later in the morning.
Apart from the above-mentioned tweet, the allegedly hacked account also abused President Joe Biden. It also tweeted, 'North Korea is about to get smoked,' and 'When I become president, I'm going to burn the SEC.'
The tweets were removed around half an hour after they were posted.
Trump Jr.'s spokesperson, Andrew Surabian, tweeted on X himself and confirmed that 'Don’s account has been hacked.' He also went ahead and posted that the false tweet about the death of former President Trump was 'obviously not true.'
According to reports, this incident raised some daunting questions for X, mainly regarding the company's ability to safely secure the platform's accounts, especially those belonging to high-ranking public officials. In August this year, X said that the company was hiring people for its safety and election departments after last year's mass layoffs under its new owner, Elon Musk.
Reports suggest that it's still unknown whether it's due to X's compromise on account safety and security that hackers were able to gain access to Trump Jr.'s private direct messages.
This isn't the first time that hackers have gained control of high-profile accounts on the social media platform. In 2020, numerous accounts on X, then known as Twitter, belonging to well-known public personalities like Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet were hacked in order to spread the message about a bitcoin scam.
Former founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, after the incident, said in a statement that it was a 'tough day' for them. He also added that they felt 'terrible this happened' and were diagnosing the issue to understand what happened. After some hours, Twitter acknowledged the hacking and termed it as a 'security incident.'
