FC Barcelona confirmed its Twitter accounts were hacked early Wednesday morning after a message appeared welcoming Paris Saint-Germain’s Angel Di Maria to the Catalonia based Club.
August 2017 has not been a good month for FC Barcelona. After losing Neymar to Paris Saint Germain in a record-breaking transfer, they suffered humbling defeats to bitter rivals Real Madrid across two legs of Supercopa de Espana within five days.
And things only got worse later as the club’s official Twitter account sent out a tweet saying, “Welcome Angel Di Maria to FC Barcelona!”
The hacker group OurMine later urged Barcelona to contact them apparently for account recovery. They made another post asking the users to “get #FCBHack trending on Twitter!”.
Later, the club tweeted: “Our accounts have been hacked tonight. We’re working to solve the problem as soon as possible.”
The hackers and the club battled for hours before the Spanish club giants regained control of their official social media handle.
Our accounts have been hacked tonight.
We’re working to solve the problem as soon as possible.
Thanks for your patience.— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) August 23, 2017
In replying the tweets, a supporter of the Spanish club went on to blame Neymar for the hack.
Its Neymar pic.twitter.com/w1Jo51V7xq
— Vanessa_Wavy (@dirac400) August 23, 2017
Credit for the hack was claimed by OurMine, a Saudi Arabian group who have also hacked the Facebook account of CNN, and Twitter accounts of Netflix, Marvel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg among many others.