Electric car maker Tesla fell prey to hacking on Saturday when the company’s Twitter account, website, and media-relations e-mail account were hijacked by #RIPPRGANG.
The initial signs of hacking showed up when a gang announced on Tesla’s official Twitter account that it was now under the control of the attackers.
The tweet said: "This Twitter is now ran [sic] by Henry Blair Strater [sic] from Oswego Illinois, call me at [number redacted]."
Later, the attackers changed the name of the account from "Tesla Motors" to "#RIPPRGANG, and also tricked users to follow certain accounts and call a specific number promising to give away free Tesla cars.
The number posted by the hackers belonged to a computer repair shop in Illinois, which was bombarded by phone calls following the announcement, reported Tech Crunch.
Tesla’s official website also redirected to a website with ‘ISIS’ in its URL, and showed a picture of Osama Bin Laden riding a Tesla and red "Hacked by Autismsquad."
According to reports, after the incident Tesla took down the website. However, the Twitter account is reportedly still vulnerable.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s personal Twitter account was also not spared, as it was hacked for a brief period around the same time its website and Twitter were hijacked.
