Security research firm OurMine is at it again. In what seems to be a bid to drive the popularity of their website and security enhancement service, OurMine has been personally taking responsibility for a lot of high-profile hacks lately, such as the Quora account of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter accounts. When OurMine strikes, they don’t seem to steal any data or alter anything; they simply leave a message with their name, saying that they’re testing the high profile account’s security, and then they usually link to their website, ask the account owner to message them, or both. The latest to have their security tested is Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, on his own platform.
Early Monday morning, OurMine took a crack at Dorsey’s Twitter, and when they managed to get in, they Tweeted out their usual message for all to see, along with a short video, which has since been erased. They also hit Vine, but the video has since been erased, like the main video on Twitter. Dorsey’s people seemed locked in a battle of sorts with OurMine for a time, with OurMine’s Tweets disappearing and being replaced by identical Tweets for quite a while until things finally seemed to die down some time in the wee hours of the morning.
OurMine’s website purports to sell their services for individual accounts at $30, all accounts for an individual at $150, websites at $1,000 and companies at $5,000. For the website and company prices, they apparently have a look over the entire site or the entire business intranet and reveal weak points in security to the owner, along with how to fix them. The way the business works is apparently via contact at the PayPal email address of anybody who pays upfront. The site bears a “News” section where the OurMine crew shares relevant web security news and, of course, coverage of their own hacking achievements. With this bullish manner of operating, it seems a bit tough to tell just how legitimate OurMine might be or how far they’re willing to go in the name of security. In either case, with security already becoming an increasingly dominant topic in the news and private discussion these days, it’s safe to assume that OurMine’s antics will help keep the conversation going strong.