The accounts of former Fox News hosts Eric Bolling and Greta Van Susteren—two of the 45 people Donald Trump follows—appear to have been hijacked by a Turkish hacking group.
Both accounts lost their blue verified check mark and began tweeting in support of controversial Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this week. The top banner photos on their profiles were changed to show the same pro-Turkish Army image.
“You are hacked by the Turkish cyber army Ayyıldız Tim! We got your DM correspondence! We will show you the power of the Turk!” read one message posted to Bolling’s account.
https://twitter.com/realEricShaffer/status/953408103227248641
The hackers also reportedly posted photos of his direct messages on Tuesday. Included in the photos were his cell phone number and email address. His 889,000 followers could only see a small piece of information from his latest DMs. It appears one had been sent to Donald Trump Jr. Similarly, Van Susteren’s account tweeted an image of a direct message sent to President Donald Trump.
“We got your DM correspondence,” a pinned tweet from Van Susteren’s account said. “We will show you the power of the Turk!”
Both TV personalities appear to have regained their accounts by late Tuesday. The tweets the hackers posted and the top banners of both accounts were removed. We can all but confirm these two hacks were related. Both accounts were updated with nearly identical propaganda and Van Susteren even retweeted a pro-Turisk message posted from Bolling’s account. It’s possible the hackers were targeting the accounts followed by President Trump.
“As many of you know, my twitter account was hacked…I think I have now handled the problem,” Van Susteren tweeted shortly after regaining control of her account. “What a waste of 3 hours to handle…but thank you @Twitter for helping me.”
Dealing w/ a hacker to my twitter certainly was a lousy way to spend an evening ..but alas, there are worse ways https://t.co/D9CJLi4rcZ
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) January 17, 2018
“Legit Turkish hackers. But we are back in #maga mode again,” Bolling wrote.
Legit Turkish hackers. But we are back in #maga mode again. pic.twitter.com/PfdFv6ctFb
— 🇺🇸 ERIC BOLLING 🇺🇸 (@ericbolling) January 17, 2018
Bolling was cut by Fox News in September following a sexual harassment investigation. Law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison were looking into reports that the host sent unsolicited photos to current and former female colleagues at Fox. Bolling denies the allegations. Van Susteren left the network in September 2016 after a reported contract dispute.
This isn’t the first time Turkish hackers have gone after the Twitter accounts of media personalities, as Business Insider points out. On Sunday, the account of Klaus Brinkbäumer, the editor-in-chief of German publication Der Spiegel, was hacked after he pressed on a link that appeared to come from a trusted Washington, D.C. source.