An investigation is ongoing as Sweden’s ruling Social Democratic Party’s account suffered a hacking attack. The political party’s logo was altered by the hackers who included the Bitcoin logo to the original design.
Including anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric, social media users came to notice the hack after a stream of unusual activity.
One post falsely claimed that Stefan Lofven, the Prime Minister and party leader would resign.
Although the police have been informed about the incident, it is still unclear who is responsible for hijacking the account.
It happened early on Monday morning. The very odd tweets sent from the Social Democratic Party’s Twitter account could just not have gone unnoticed.
And before the party gained control of the account, more than 20 tweets on a vast range of topics had already gone out.
Here was a tweet by Christian Christensen on the hacking;
“The social media account (@socialdemokrat) of Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats has clearly been hacked, with someone positing tweets about, for example, rapes and rising taxes. Been going on for 30 mins. pic.twitter.com/Ay3qgz6Kb5”
— Christian Christensen (@ChrChristensen) April 15, 2019
The tweets weren’t left as they were subsequently removed from the account’s timeline.
A party spolesperson told the BBC, “We contacted the police immediately and are working with Twitter.”
“Attacks on political parties are attacks on free speech and democracy. We do everything we can to prevent these kind of intrusions.”
The hijacked Twitter account made a number of false talks and touched on far-right issues.
It claimed that cannabis had been legalized, the Swedish PM would resign and that the official currency in Sweden has been replaced with Bitcoin.
As a result of the vast number of users on Twitter and the vast number of followers of the party’s Twitter account, screenshots were already taken. One was a direct message sent to Annika Strandhall, the Social Security Minister.
“You are fired,” the message reads in Swedish
Interspersed with the claims was anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric.
One tweet sent from the account read, “One like equals one dead Muslim.”
And another post read, “Celebrate that we have reached a record number of rape victims with raising taxes and opening up the borders. Socialism for the win.”
A spokesperson for the party told the BBC, “I do not want to speculate on what or who is behind the attack.”