Wales Education watchdog Estyn tweets swastikas and pro-Erdoğan support after huge global accounts hack

The Twitter account of  Wales education watchdog Estyn was targeted by pro-Turkish hackers this morning.

Thousands of Twitter accounts have been compromised in the hack many of them belonging to high profile companies and organisations.

Accounts were taken over and used to post Nazi swastikas and referencing the ongoing political fall out between the Netherlands and Turkey.

Tension between the two countries has been simmering since the Dutch expelled two Turkish ministers and banned them from rallying in the run up to todays election in the Netherlands.

President Tayyip Erdogan suspended high-level diplomatic ties with the Netherlands and branded the country’s citizens “Nazi remnants”

Pro-Turkish hackers gained access to thousands of accounts over the last few hours through a third party analytics application tweeting;

“See you on April 16,” the tweets read, which is the date of Turkey’s referendum to grant more powers to Erdogan, while also referring to the hack being a “little Ottoman slap.”

The tweets also link to a YouTube video uploaded on March 14, which includes a number of clips of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The hacked Estyn tweet appeared in timelines just after 8am.

The Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales posted at tweet apologising to its 7576 following at 9.06am.

Apologies to followers who may have noticed some interference on our feed after unauthorised access occurred. We are now investigating.

— Estyn (@EstynHMI) March 15, 2017

Other Twitter accounts hijacked include European Parliament. The UK Department of Health, BBC North America, Reuters Japan, Die Welt and Forbes, Amnesty International and UNICEF USA.

Third party service Twitter Counter – which allows Twitter users to track stats, followers and hashtags – is believed to have been hacked and the accounts of its users spammed.

Twitter Counter tweeted that an investigation in underway.

“We’re aware that our service was hacked and have started an investigation into the matter,” it said. “We’ve already taken measures to contain such abuse.”

In a statement Twitter said it was “aware of an issue affecting a number account holders this morning. Our teams are working at pace and taking direct action on this issue. We quickly located the source which was limited to a third party app. We removed its permissions immediately. No additional accounts are impacted.”

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