Just Because It's Trending Doesn't Mean It's True

Belgian Hacker Makes Donald Trump Tweet About My Little Pony

  • by: Maarten Schenk
  • (Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:34:09 Z)

Belgian security researcher Inti De Ceukelaire strikes again. After hijacking one of Donald Trump's tweets earlier to make him tweet a video mocking his Russian connections, De Ceukelaire has now made an old Trump tweet play a video for a My Little Pony fan convention:

Here is a screenshot of the tweet in case it gets taken down:

trumpponytweet.jpg

And this is the video the tweet now links to:

De Ceukelaire has been trawling through old Trump tweets looking for ones that link to expired domain names. He then registered these domains so he could basically point them to any website or video he wants, making it appear Donald Trump tweeted a link to them.

He claimed on Twitter he has hijacked at least three Trump tweets like this, although he has revealed only this one and the one mentioned here:

Found out what the other one was? Let us know: [email protected]

About the author:

Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk