Bristol Rovers have issued a warning to supporters amid a potential data breach after CEO Tom Gorringe’s Twitter account was hacked.
At 21:19 on Tuesday night, a string of strange messages started appearing on Gorringe’s Twitter feed with his username changed to “vitalik.eth” and profile picture also altered to a low resolution stock image of Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency.
The account sent three messages over the course of 19 minutes to its 6,000 followers: “Being a CEO is really hard”; “We may not win every match but we are ready to train hard and dream of winning the championship league”; “the next UEFA is going to be ours. Mark my words.”
All replies were switched off with bemused fans only able to quote tweet to acknowledge the messages. As 7am on Wednesday morning, the account remained in its hacked state.
In a statement, Rovers said : “We are aware that the Twitter account of our CEO Tom Gorringe has been hacked. Please disregard any posts on there whilst we work to resolve the matter, and also do not reply to any messages from the account.”
Although supporters found the situation amusing, the incident does have more serious implications given it would leave Gorringe’s direct messages open to the hackers to read any communication made on the platform. How they accessed the account could have further implications regarding company emails and other social media platforms.
Gorringe is a frequent user of Twitter to help present a modern and accessible image of the football club, using it to help celebrate successes big and small and celebrate individuals at Rovers as well as communicate with fans.
The 32-year-old was appointed to the role in November last year, replacing Martyn Starnes, as the youngest CEO in the EFL, having served as commercial director for four years prior to that.
He is far from the first victim of the “vitalik.eth” hack, with City Arabia - for Arabic-speaking fans of Manchester City - Indian airline Go First, Israeli news programme N12 and the Premium Times Newspaper in Nigeria subjected to a similar attack this month.
The format has been for those accounts to then promote bogus and potentially fraudulent links to apparent cryptocurrency giveaways. As of last night there were 32 separate Twitter accounts bearing the username “vitalik.eth”.
SIGN UP: To receive our free Rovers newsletter, bringing you the latest from the Mem
READ NEXT:
