TheCable

The official Twitter account of Oluseun Onigbinde, co-founder of BudgIT Nigeria, a civic tech organisation, has been hacked.

The organisation disclosed this via the Twitter handle of BudgIT.

“Hello, our Lead Partner’s account has been hacked! Oluseun Onigbinde can’t tweet from his handle. We advise caution,” the tweet read.

Hello, our Lead Partner's account has been hacked! Oluseun Onigbinde can't tweet from his handle. We advise caution.

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— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) August 3, 2017

Onigbinde told TheCable that the attack on his account occurred around 3:58pm on Tuesday.

“Yes, it was hacked. One guy logged in to my Twitter account, changed my username, changed my email. I am still trying to ascertain if he has access to my email,” Onigbinde said.

“He took down the account and was requesting $100.

“It happened yesterday evening around 3pm. I was in a meeting and I just discovered I couldn’t access my account.

“Twitter has taken it up, and they are also investigating it. I am trying to restrict the account. That’s my plan. We are also trying so we are not compromised.

“I don’t mind much, our BudgIT is what actually matters most and at a very high cost for us, we have to continually protect ourselves from cyber-attacks.

“It is not something new. In as much as we are trying hard to strengthen our security profile on our web, maybe it is time to also do more on our social media.”

On May 12, the world was hit with a massive cyber-attack with over 200,000 computers across over 200 countries including UK, Russia, North Korea and Ukraine affected.

Several websites including Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify were inaccessible by many users in the United States and other parts of the world.

Experts described it as the world’s “greatest cyber-attack”.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has listed protective measures needed to guide against cyber-attack.