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.
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.
