It was quite the eventful weekend for Chipotle: The giant burrito hawker had its Twitter account hacked late Saturday night. Any of @ChipotleTweets' 600,000-plus followers who happened to be awake browsing their Twitter feeds were treated to an onslaught of all-caps tweets spewing racist insults, including one directed at President Obama, as well as anti-government sentiments and pro-Nazi statements. The hackers also changed Chipotle's profile photo to an image of a swastika.
Luckily for the beloved fast-casual chain, most of their Twitter followers instantly recognized the hateful tweets as the work of hackers and seemed to sympathize:
The PR department of Chipotle will be working overtime tomorrow. I feel for yall, I love you guys. #Chipotle #ouch pic.twitter.com/VEjvbMjuhx
— Brandon McKinney (@BrandonMcKinney) February 8, 2015
When I see a brand's Twitter account gets hacked, I just feel for their social team. #Chipotle
— Grace Low (@GraceofWrath) February 8, 2015
Chipotle UR not acting like urself today eat a snickers #chipotle pic.twitter.com/UTdANWgBLZ
— nunya (@WhoIsSerena) February 8, 2015
The Daily Dot points out that "During the hack, Chipotle's Twitter bio was changed to point to two other accounts, presumably belonging to the hackers claiming credit for the attack," offering a screenshot of a tweet from one of the alleged hackers saying he "did it for the lulz." (Said accounts have since been suspended.) The hackers were reportedly able to gain control of the Twitter account by "compromising Chipotle's domain name system (DNS)" and redirecting emails to a different address, enabling them to reset the brand's Twitter password.
Chipotle finally regained control of its Twitter account around 4:30 a.m. EST Sunday morning. All the offending tweets were quickly deleted, followed by an official apology to its followers:
We apologize for the very offensive messages sent out from our account earlier tonight. We were unfortunately hijacked temporarily. -Joe
— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) February 8, 2015
While most of Chipotle's loyal fans don't seem too upset about this whole hacking incident, they would appreciate some free food:
Chipotle owes the world free burritos for those tweets... @ChipotleTweets
— Willie Jones (@ThatKiddWill) February 8, 2015
Like maybe just give us all free burritos instead of use the 'n-word?' #Chipotle
— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) February 8, 2015
Back in 2013 it was speculated that Chipotle's Twitter may have been hacked following a string of nonsensical tweets, but it turned out to be just a bizarre media stunt. Now that Chipotle's PR team knows the sting of a real hacking incident, it's safe to say they won't be doing that again in the future.
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