Twitch streamer and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds star Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek had his Twitter account hacked this past Saturday. The popular gaming personality was the latest of a growing list of influencers to get their social media accounts exploited in the last week.
Shroud, known for his insane PUBG skills, had his Twitter compromised around 9:40 am on Saturday morning, with the hacker using the account to tweet as a hacker normally would, asking people to follow certain accounts and spewing out a bit of hate - in this case, racial slurs and derogatory remarks directed to Keemstar, FaZe Ewok and Dr. Disrespect.
The hacker also promised to leak nude photos of Shroud, as well as pictures of his girlfriend Hannah "Bnans" Kennedy, once a certain number of follows was reached. We have to assume that said photos do not exist, or at least we don't want them to exist.
The tweets ceased at 10:08 am and were subsequently deleted, leading to the belief that the streamer had gotten things sorted out by then. He would tweet a photo of two lounging kittens nearing evening along with the caption: "WERE BACK BABY. I'm sorry about that.. :( enjoy this pls. Thx <3."
As mentioned above, Shroud isn't the only high-profile influencer to have a social media account hacked in recent times. Ninja, another very popular streamer, had his Instagram account hijacked on July 25th, as a hacker tried promoting a phony Samsung phone giveaway. The gaming celebrity, Tyler Blevins, didn't take very long to regain control of his account, however.
Fortnite World Cup winner Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf saw both his Twitter and Twitch accounts hacked just minutes after he won the event's solo competition on July 28. The perpetrator promoted another Twitter account via Bugha's and a live stream with pretty much the same prompt would appear on his Twitch channel.
Jake "Poach" Brumleve of Team Liquid suffered a hack just a day before Shroud and lost his verification tick as a result after the hacker changed his handle. The breach led to several insults being hurled at other influencers.
Fortunately, these hacks haven't caused much damage, at least not irreparable damage. However, the trend is indeed worrying.