Past high-profile cheats because of the secretive team include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Bing CEO Sundar Pichai and Pokémon Go’s servers

OurMine posted on BuzzFeed’s web site: ‘Don’t share fake news we have your database about us again. The next time it will be public.’ Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

OurMine posted on BuzzFeed’s web site: ‘Don’t share fake news about us once more, we’ve your database. The next occasion it will be public.’ Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Final modified on Tue 21 Feb 2017 17.13 GMT

BuzzFeed ended up being hacked by OurMine on Wednesday in obvious retaliation for a protestant dating online story that advertised to unmask one of many users of the secretive team.

On BuzzFeed posted a story claiming to have identified one of the members of the group as a Saudi teen called Ahmad Makki tuesday. The hackers managed to breach BuzzFeed with a post, which has since been taken down, that read in response, on Wednesday

“Hacked by OurMine team, don’t share fake news we have your database about us again. The next occasion it will be public. Don’t screw with OurMine again.”

Expected in a contact to make clear just what “we have actually your database” meant, a message account linked to the team told the Guardian: “Emails, Passwords Hashes, Usernames.”

Previous high-profile cheats by the group include assaults on HSBC, Bing CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales. The group additionally took along the servers for Niantic’s popular augmented-reality game Pokémon Go in July.

Makki would not answer an ask for remark. a statement on OurMine’s web site reads: “Yesterday Buzzfeed Created a post that people are merely 1 member called Ahmed Makki, therefore we can concur that we don’t Have an user called ‘Ahmed Makki’ and now we are now actually 4 we had been 3 but somebody joined up with, and then we hacked it as they are reporting fake news about us.”“We have actually an associate called ‘Makki’ although not ahmad makki, and then he is certainly not from saudi arabia,” the statement proceeded.

A picture emerged of a group of three (now four) ambitious former “black hat” – or malicious – hackers, all male, from several different countries, aged between 17 and 22 in a series of conversations in July between the Guardian and a number of accounts verified as being associated with OurMine.

The group’s aim, two users told the Guardian, would be to make a name for themselves as “white cap” information security specialists.

OurMine makes no funds from its more eye-catching cheats, one stated. But, he stated it made $20,000 to $40,000 every month from their protection consultancy.

Certainly one of their hackers, whom calls himself Abody, told the Guardian which he struggled to obtain Microsoft as a job, though this could not be verified day. He stated which he had been many happy with the Pichai hack, that he stated was indeed accomplished making use of a vulnerability within the crowdsourced question-and-answer social networking Quora.

Asked just what he enjoys about hacking, he stated he said he wanted OurMine to be “the biggest security group in the world” that he“just wants to upgrade people security”, and.

Abody said I was 10, my friend was a hacker that he learned hacking “when. He revealed me personally their methods at hacking, and now we discovered a complete lot of hacking together, now our company is employed by OurMine.”

The group’s approach appears to be working. OurMine has swiftly made a title for it self with high-profile cheats such as that of Pichai –but several of its smaller cheats do appear to have triggered individuals taking them on as protection experts.

Certainly one of its consumers, a YouTube video-maker called Jordi van den Bussche, told the Guardian their media that are social had been hacked because of the team in 2015. After he taken care of immediately its message, he stated: “Once we began chatting we realised which they kinda take action for enjoyable and also to assist individuals, in place of wanting to take cash or information. Then I challenged them in an attempt to hack me personally once again plus they did! several times!”

“They aided me personally enhance my safety and due to them we been able to protect all my information off their hackers. Since their tricks and tips we realised that hackers aren’t constantly bad. This option may have a name that is bad if you ask me these are typically simply wanting to assist,” Van den Bussche stated.