Your Anon News, a subset of the hactivist collective Anonymous, had its Twitter account hacked early Friday morning by a rival group of hackers.
The little-known "Rustle League," a group that the U.K.'s Vice has characterized as Anonymous' "dedicated trolls," got access to the account at around 2:30 a.m. Friday. In addition to hacking @YourAnonNews, which has more than one million followers, the Rustle League also apparently hacked the account led by the Anonymous-allied group People's Liberation Front.
The Rustle League has hacked Anonymous-led Twitter accounts before: @YourAnonNews was first hacked by the Rustle League in December 2012, while Anonymous' central Twitter account, @Anon_Central, was attacked by the League in February of this year. The more recent attacks have focused on disseminating the #RustleLeague hashtag and included racially-offensive language.
As of 11 a.m. Friday, the rightful owners of the @YourAnonNews Twitter account had regained control and deleted the Rustle League's tweets. The People's Liberation Front account appears to still be hacked and displays the #RustleLeague hashtag.
But take note: There may be reason to doubt these hacks are even real. After the February attack, Anonymous and the Rustle League both belatedly claimed that the "hack" had been coordinated as a joke. Will the same be said of these attacks? Maybe.