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Sundar Pichai was just hacked by the same group that hacked Mark Zuckerberg

By Christian de Looper June 28, 2016

Sundar Pichai — Image used with permission by copyright holder

We’re in the age of the hack, and it seems as though no one is immune. Not even the CEO of a company that should know better — Google. That’s right, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been hacked by a group called OurMine, which took over Pichai’s account on popular question-and-answer site Quora.

Pichai isn’t even the first major tech CEO to be hacked by OurMine. Just a few weeks ago the group hacked none other than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg,and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and the group says it’s not done yet.

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The hacks have been pretty harmless so far. OurMine has largely stuck to posting comments like “we are just testing your security,” letting whoever was hacked know that they shouldn’t worry otherwise.

Of course, they should worry. As leaders of the tech world, it doesn’t bode well for them to be seen as hackable. Once those messages were posted in Pichai’s Quora account, they were automatically posted on his Twitter, broadcasting the hack to all 508,000 of his followers. Those tweets have now been removed.

When OurMine hacked Mark Zuckerberg, the hackers claim to have gotten in simply by finding his password, ‘dadada,’ which was exposed through a LinkedIn breach. In both hacks the group simply claimed that security was “really weak,” which it wrote in a blog post.

OurMine has claimed to multiple outlets that it will continue going after tech executives and even celebrities — one of its growing list of victims is movie star Channing Tatum.

According to a report from The Next Web, OurMine gained access to Pichai’s account through a vulnerability in Quora, which it claims to have reported to Quora. Quora, however, says that it doesn’t believe that a vulnerability led to Pichai’s account being compromised.

This goes without saying, but if you’re a Quora user, you may want to change your password.

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Christian de Looper

Contributor

Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

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