The City of Peterborough’s account on X, formerly called Twitter, was hacked on Sunday (January 14).
According to a media release from the city, the account was taken over by a hacker and renamed @JupiterExhanqe.
“No personal information was shared by the City of Peterborough through its X social media account,” reads the media release.
The hacked account describes itself as “Full stack ecosystem play focused on advancing decentralized trading, solana & the meta.”
While the city has reacquired the original @CityPtbo account name, all content originally posted by the city (over 18,000 tweets) as well as the city’s 16,097 followers remain on the hacked account. The city is advising those followers that any tweets they see from the @JupiterExhanqe account are not from the city.
The hacked account also still includes the grey checkmark that X uses to indicate an account representing a government organization.
The city has contacted X to request that followers of the renamed account be restored to the @CityPtbo account.
Social media accounts, especially government accounts and those with a large number of followers, are a frequent target for hackers. They may try to hack the accounts for bragging rights or to use them for cybercrime or to distribute spam.
It is not known how hackers gained access to the city’s X account, but they can do so using different methods, including social engineering, phishing scams, week or reused passwords, malware, and “man-in-the-middle” attacks. To keep an account secure, X recommends using a strong and unique password, enabling two-factor authentication, and requiring an email and phone number to request a reset password link or code.
