Hackers have secretly used the Instagram account of the famous pop star singer, Britney Spears, for testing their malware coded messages. A security company has confirmed the news and it has confirmed that there were some coded messages which were found in the comment sections of Spears' account. Apparently, the singer didn't know anything about it and has treated those coded messages as ordinary comments.
A Slovakian Antivirus company, the ESET, has confirmed that when these coded messages are scanned, this will allow the hackers to steal important and personal information of the account owner.
One of the suspicious comments from a fan were written like, “#2hot make loved to her, uupss HHot #X."
Computer hackers
According to a report from USA Today, coded messages can be translated into a certain website address if a certain person knows what and how to look for. Unfortunately, Spears has no knowledge about it type of thing. Meanwhile, senior malware researcher, Jean-Ian Boutin, has explained that there is no danger for Spears' followers as there is no way for their devices to be contaminated.
The suspicious comments which were found in Spears' account have no active or clickable links that might harm other Instagram users. ESET researchers have conducted their investigation and they found out that the hackers were Russians who were dubbed, Turla.
Foreign government hackers
ESET has clearly identified that Turla was trying to use Spears' account for a malware testing attack. These people are known for hacking government websites, diplomatic contents and other defense entities across Europe, Asia, Middle East, and United States.
Further, a senior analyst named Cristiana Brafman Kittner, has also confirmed the communication that ESET has been tracked back to Russian hackers.
This malicious software is used by hackers in order to infect computer networks and they will immediately wait for confirmations that will allow them to get important information.
In this instance, the hackers have comments to Spears' account for them to hide the encoded URL which has direct connections to their servers. In several cases, hackers have been using plain text messages and it does happen from time to time. Back in 2014, the ESET team were also able to find the same hacking issue on Twitter. They added that it is the first time they have encountered these hackers in Instagram accounts.
