Fast food chain Burger King has come under hacker attack, evidencing a lack of focus in the hacktivist universe.
Hawking fast food rival McDonald’s brand, the cyber punks breached Burger King’s Twitter defenses 12:24 p.m. EST on Monday, company spokesman Bryson Thornton said in an email, according to Reuters. Burger King Worldwide Inc suspended its Twitter account about an hour thereafter.
“It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked,” the company said in a statement. “We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings.”
Several tweets carried the logo of Burger King’s larger rival McDonald’s, but spelled the latter company’s name incorrectly. Others sought to tarnish Burger King, the third-largest U.S. hamburger chain, and its employees.
“Just got sold to McDonalds,” one tweet said, adding “FREDOM IS FAILURE”.
In recent weeks, a global group of hactivists, social activists using the Internet to spread their message and breach the online security systems of targeted foes, have disabled government, banking and newspaper websites.
The hacktivist group Anonymous, known largely for their role in disabling government and banking websites in response to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s social assassination by the United States, has yet to claim responsibility.
It remains unclear why Burger King would come under hacktivist attack. Burger King has been involved in legal battles regarding animal rights and its expansion in the Middle East. But to date, the company appears to have avoided the kind of social suicidal tendencies of, say Bank of America, a business partly responsible for the U.S. housing bubble and bust as well as the collapse of world markets. Bank of America’s websites have suffered repeated breach by hacktivists.
Burger King is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. McDonalds is its largest competitor in fast food hamburger restaurants in terms of number of locations.