Jeep Twitter account falls to hackers in latest whale of a fail

A day after hackers took over the Twitter feed of Burger King and switched it to a promotion of McDonalds, a similar effort successfully took control of Jeep's Twitter handle, swapping the user icon for the Cadillac logo and sending a barrage of expletive-filled tweets. Jeep's SUVs may be rugged, but its passwords apparently aren't.

The breech of Jeep's account happened about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, and as with Burger King, the hackers quickly began sending messages similar to the ones Monday, with call-outs to the hacking group Anonymous and jokes that the brand had been sold to Cadillac and that Jeep stood for "just empty every pocket." The background image on the account was also changed to a Internet-famous shot of a McDonald's-themed donk. Within a half hour, many of the tweets had been deleted, although the hackers appeared to still be in control; a spokesman for Jeep said the company was "working to resolve" it quickly. (Cadillac also disavowed any role, as McDonald's did on Monday as well.)

While Burger King scrambled to deal with the fallout from its hacking, the event added 30,000 followers to the account, which before the hack had been a dull stream of daily coupons. That's part of the appeal of hacking such an account; access to a high-profile tool that has 100,000 followers but rarely says anything as noteworthy as what a few hackers can dream up.