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Elmo from the popular kids’ show Sesame Street has been hacked. Elmo’s X account was hijacked and posted a series of problematic posts with profanity-laced messages claiming that Donald Trump in included in Epstein files and calling him a puppet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among other distasteful messages.
According to cybersecurity expert Graham Cluley, the messages were posted on Elmo’s X account for less than 30 minutes. However, Elmo’s massive following (over 600,000) meant that the posts were seen by a significant audience. They were eventually taken down, but at the time of writing, Elmo’s X account still has a link in the bio that points to a Telegram channel run by someone calling themselves “Rugger,” who’s seemingly claiming credit for the hack.
It’s unclear how the account was compromised, and no official confirmation from Elmo or his co-star’s accounts has yet been published. Given how the messages disappeared out of nowhere, one can only assume that either the people running Elmo’s account regained access and deleted the tweets, or, considering how the Telegram link is still present in the bio, the hacker might just have deleted the posts themselves after getting the initial traction they needed.
There are multiple ways of compromising an X account, or any other social media account, for that matter. Apart from the usual social engineering or phishing attacks, if a third-party service connected to a specific account gets breached, that can also be a potential entry point for a hacker. As mentioned before, no official explanation or statement addressing the hack has been released yet. Given the timings of the breach, it’s unlikely that an explanation will follow.
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