NFL Formally Acknowledges Official League and Team Social Media Accounts Were Hacked

The NFL released a statement on Tuesday addressing the cyber attacks on its social media accounts that occurred this week. OurMine, a "White Hat" Saudi hacking account that promotes its own cybersecurity services, hacked a number of the NFL team accounts on Monday.

The first team to be exposed appeared to be the Chicago Bears, an event which came on Sunday. The group then followed up their attacks by hacking several other team Twitter and Instagram accounts, including the main NFL page.

After the hackers had some fun with the Bears' account, trading Khalil Mack, among other shenanigans, the next day's worth of attacks resulted in Tweets saying that "everything is hackable," with some team pages losing their profile pictures. On Instagram, the attacks resulted in the team pages posting a photo of the OurMine logo.

OurMine claimed that the attacks were intended to expose a lack of security on the platform, while also promoting its own cyber security services. The Tweets have since been deleted, and every account has been restored to its former condition.

The NFL is now working closely with the social media platform providers, as well as law enforcement to secure its accounts.

“As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and we are currently investigating the situation,” Twitter spokeswoman Jen Santamaria said.