Hackers take control of TAP’s Twitter account

TAP has reportedly been the victim of a scam, losing access to its Twitter account. The airline’s official page started publishing strange messages on Tuesday around lunchtime: a series of tweets with the word “awesome”.

When contacted, an official TAP source declined to comment on the situation. The company is aware of the situation and is investigating the causes of this incident, found the ECO.

At 2.30 pm, TAP’s Twitter account had the name “.” and no profile photo. It was not clear whether or not TAP had already regained control of its account on the social network, but six tweets with the message “awesome” were still visible to the public.

TAP has over 80,000 followers and 106,000 published tweets. Despite the apparent intrusion, the company still had, at that time, the blue authenticity seal awarded by Twitter to users considered to be of public interest. Over 12 tweets were presumably deleted, with the platform displaying the message “this tweet is unavailable”.

The problem appears to be confined to Twitter, as TAP’s Facebook and Instagram accounts continued to display apparent normality. However, it was not possible to confirm whether the invasion was limited to the social networks or if third parties had accessed more of the company’s digital properties.

This is the third cybersecurity incident in Portugal since the beginning of this year. 2022 kicked off with a group of attackers taking control of the Impresa group’s websites, including those of SIC Notícias and Expresso, which currently continue to operate in a provisional version, with no historical archive available.

On Sunday, it was made public that the website of the Assembly of the Republic may have been the target of a cyberattack. Like Impresa, this case is also being investigated by the Judicial Police, and the parliament website has been unavailable for almost a day, while an audit is being carried out to ascertain the authenticity of the information.