Twitter co-founder and Chief Executive Jack Dorsey had his own Twitter account hijacked Friday, the company confirmed.

Several vile tweets were shared from Mr. Dorsey’s verified @Jack account starting at about 3:44 p.m. ET.

Two of the tweets contained the N-word and one stated that “Hitler is innocent.” Another was a retweet of another user who had tweeted: “nazi germany did nothing wrong.”

A total of 22 tweets were shared from the account within 15 minutes before the suspicious activity abruptly stopped and the posts removed.

Several of the tweets posted during the hack had been widely shared before being deleted, however; a tweet containing both an expletive and racial slur had been retweeted by more than 3,000 other accounts within minutes of being posted.

Twitter said later Friday that the tweets were the result of a breach involving a phone number connected to Mr. Dorsey’s account.

“The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider. This allowed an unauthorized person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number,” Twitter said in a statement.

“The account is now secure, and there is no indication that Twitter’s systems have been compromised,” Twitter added.

Mr. Dorsey, 42, co-founded Twitter in 2006. His account on the popular social networking service is followed by more than 4.2 million users.



In a letter sent in June in response to questions raised by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Dorsey said he protects his personal Twitter account using two-factor authentication — a security best practice in which a user is required to provide additional credentials beyond their password before gaining access to an account.

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