OurMine

Submission 22,365

About

OurMine is the name of a hacking organization that has hacked high-profile celebrity social media accounts, ostensibly to advertise their cybersecurity commercial services.

Online History

Ourmine formed on September 14th, 2014.^[1] According to a Reddit post on /r/DramaAlert by Awesome334,^[2] the group was formed by a group of 3-5 Saudi Arabians who originally hacked the accounts of Minecraft users. Awesome334 claimed to be a moderator on Minecraft forum HiveMC,^[3] and gained knowledge of Ourmine because Ourmine created a nearly identical website which fooled users into giving their information. Through the first year of their existence, Ourmine hacked YouTube, Skype, PayPal, Minecraft, Xbox Live, PlayStation and HiveMC accounts.^[4] On July 29th, 2015, Softpedia reported that the group had performed DDoS attacks on 9 financial institutions, though they did not specify which. On June 20th, 2016, OurMine launched a website^[7] in which they bragged about who they'd hacked.

Markiplier Hack

The group gained its most attention to date when it hacked popular Youtube gamer Markiplier on January 12th, 2016.^[5] They posted a since-deleted video to his account that was titled "Hacked by OurMine Team." They later published a screenshot of Markiplier's earnings for the month of November 2015.^[6]

High Profile Hacks

In the summer of 2016, Ourmine pulled off a series of very high-profile hacks, including Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, Pokemon GO creator John Hanke, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (shown below), and Mark Zuckerberg. In all instances, the group publicized the hack merely to advertise their cybersecurity services.

It was around this time OurMine drew the attention of major media outlets, including Wired,^[8] who interviewed an anonymous member of OurMine. They insisted that they were not a "blackhat" group (meaning malicious), but that they "are just trying to tell people that nobody is safe." They also hacked the website TechCrunch.^[9]

Buzzfeed Hack

On October 4th, 2016, Buzzfeed^[10] published an article in which they identified one of the hackers as Ahmad Makki. OurMine denied that Makki was a hacker, but merely a fan of OurMine. The next day, OurMine hacked Buzzfeed,^[11] defaced several posts to read "Hacked by OURMINE," and threatened the site in a deleted post that read: "Hacked by OurMine team, don’t share fake news about us again, we have your database.Next time it will be public. Don’t fuck with OurMine again."

Youtube Hacks

October 2016

On October 30th, OurMine hacked the tech platform VidIQ, which is utilized by several popular Youtube accounts. Using a feature in VidIQ that allows users to edit their video titles and descriptions en masse, OurMine made the videos of a dozen YouTube channels, including iJustine, KittiesMama, and the Bajan Canadian, read "Hacked by OurMine." The event was covered by Daily Dot.^[12]

April 2017

On April 1st, 2017, OurMine hacked the media company Omnia Media, attacking nearly 300 of their YouTube channels and replacing titles of their videos with "OurMine Are Back!… ( Read the description )." OurMine infiltrated the company again on April 12th and replaced video titles with "#OurMine – https://youtu.be/IdJuVgR_-7M (Read the Description)." In the video description, the hacking group writes, "Hey, it's OurMine, don't worry we are just testing your security, please contact us for more information." One of the channels, Guava Juice, who has more than 5.7 million subscribers, had 40 videos renamed.

On April 13th, redditor Benson_Abigail explained OurMine's intention in a threat on the /r/OutofTheLoop subreddit.^[14] They write:

bq."Right now they're on a hackapade. They hacked about 300+ Youtuber accounts, changed video titles and put their website in the description. It's mostly popular Youtubers and celebrities. They claim to be harmless and not wanting to damage people. They just hack to advertise…he link in the video titles links to their trailer which has apparently been taken down by YouTube and the channel hosting said trailer has also been deleted."

Online Presence

OurMine used to have a Twitter account where they posted about their hacking successes, but it has been suspended. They have Facebook fan page which has nearly 2,000 likes.^[13] They have an official song, which is a parody of Ariana Grande's "One More Time."