The twitter account of Burger King Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:BKW) is back to normal after it was hacked Monday afternoon. The hacker changed the profile of the company with the logo of McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) with racial insults, drug use, and offensive messages.
An example of the 55 offensive messages tweeted by the hacker using the Burger King account include, “if I catch you at a wendys, we’re fightin!” and “We just got sold to McDonalds!”
The hacker also provided a fake link to a press release suggesting that Burger King Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:BKW) was acquired by its rival.
Twitter immediately suspended the account after learning the hacking incident. The problem was resolved later Monday afternoon. The company tweeted: “Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!”
In addition, Bryson Thornton, directors of Global communications of Burger King Worldwide Inc. (NYSE:BKW) apologized to customers who received the obscene messages from the hackers using the company’s twitter account.
In a statement, Thornton said, “Earlier today, our official BK Twitter Account was compromised by unauthorized users. Upon learning of this incident, our social media teams immediately began working with Twitter security administrators to suspend the compromised account until we could re-establish our brand’s official Twitter page. We apologize to our loyal fans and followers, whom might have received unauthorized tweets from our account. We are pleased to announce that the account is now active again.”
Thornton said, the company’s social media team and an outside agency manages its twitter account, but he did not provide further details as to how many people know the password to the account.
In a twitter message, McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) said it has nothing to do with the hacking incident. The tweed reads, “We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”
U.S. officials are very concern with the increasing incidents of cyber security problems. Most recently, hackers attacked the website of The New York Times. The newspaper company suspected that the culprits who hacked its website have ties with the Chinese military.
