With 51 million followers, whoever hacked into Taylor Swift’s Twitter account received the attention they were looking for.

The Shake-It-Off singer has the 4th largest account on the social media platform. The group of hackers dubbed the ‘Lizard Squad’, executed their brief yet high-profile breach before Swift and/or Twitter reclaimed the account within 15 minutes. Interestingly, it was Paramore’s Hayley Williams who was the first to notify Swift of the violation.

Following that, the squad  went for her Instagram and posted an image asking Swift’s fans to follow an account linked to the hackers. The featured photo was deleted promptly but violation didn’t stop there. The hackers claimed to also have nudes of the pop star and demanded a Bitcoin ransom for the return of the sensitive photographic property. Swift denies having any nudes to snag and responded to their claims with a sassy “Have fun photoshopping cause you got NOTHING”.

While this might be a bluff, following the recent leak of celeb nudes, it has been taken seriously. Twitter has fortified their security by adding heightened authentication procedures.

Lizard Squad have gained attention recently as a black hat hacking group after they took Xbox Live and the Playstation Network offline over the Christmas break. They have also claimed responsibility for the recent Facebook and Instagram outage. Why they’d then retune their focus onto Swift (assuming they really are responsible) is anyone’s guess.

As with any of those who have wronged Swift, can we expect a retaliation song? Joe Jonas copped it. Watch out, Lizard Squad.

Shalane Kerr

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