Someone might want to change the password on Tesla's Twitter accountor, at least, ensure that it's a lot more complicated to guess (and likely tied to someone's real-world credentials via two-factor authentication) in the future.

According to numerous reports yesterday, an unknown individual (or individuals) managed to get into the Tesla Twitter account, as well as the Twitter account belonging to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The hijackers claiming responsibility indicated they were known as "ripprgang" and, yes, they even posted a link to their own Twitter accountwhich isn't filled with anything interesting, unfortunately, seeing as it has already been suspended as of this article's writing.

Business Insider has a pretty large list of screenshots that show some of what the account hijackers tweeted out once they had access to @teslamotors. The tidbits include: shoutouts to other Twitter users, promises of free Tesla cars to those who followed the alleged hijackers' Twitter accounts, and other silly messages.

Worse for Tesla, its own website was also attacked shortly after its Twitter account was compromised. A group called "autismsquad" claimed responsibility for the attack on Tesla's defaced webpage. That's obviously different than the group that attacked the company's Twitter, but it's highly likely the two are related, given how the attack probably went down.

It's likely that the attackers used a DNS attack to gain access to the MX records for Tesla's website, and then used that to forward password-reset requests to the company's Twitter account to a different email address entirely.

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Tesla's website jumped from going offline, to getting defaced, to going offline quite a few times throughout the day. It took Tesla about an hour to regain access to its Twitter account and remove all the tweets that had been posted by the attackers. Its website is back to normal now as well; it's unclear just how long it took Tesla to restore everything and lock its website down once again.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also had his Twitter account hijacked yesterday as well, and the attackers filled it with the same kinds of messages as the ones they posted on Tesla's primary Twitter account.

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