Mandiant, a cybersecurity company owned by Google, had its X account hijacked on January 3 and struggled for several hours in a rather tongue-in-cheek incident to regain control of the social media account.
An unknown scammer has reportedly taken advantage of the official Mandiant
Mandiant acknowledged the incident in a statement and announced efforts to regain control of the account, which were later done successfully.
Cybersecurity company faces a cybersecurity blip
Initially, the hacked account posed as Phantom, a crypto and NFT wallet provider, and lured users to a scam website that pretended to offer tokens to 250,000 eligible accounts.
Mandiant staff reportedly engaged in a battle for hours to remove scam posts, only for them to reappear.
The attacker also posted jovial threats on the account, targeting the company's social media team, including a meme saying “change password please” and another reading “check bookmarks when you get your account back.”
Mandiant, known for helping customers investigate and recover from significant network breaches, was acquired by Google in 2022 for $5.4 billion. The company's reputation will undoubtedly take a hit from this short-lived but serious event.
Given the lack of a blue or gold checkmark, Google is not paying for the verification status of the Mandiant account, as it is for some other Google accounts on recovered the account and whether they subscribed to a paid account could have sped up the account recovery or prevented it altogether.
This is what a Mandiant spokesperson said Ny Breaking: “We are aware of the incident affecting the Mandiant X account. We have since regained control of the account and are currently working to restore it.”