Instagram accounts hacked using Meta AI

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]All right, let's get right into those hackers hijacking high-profile profile social accounts. I've got Mike Dusky here. He covers all things tech for us.

[00:00:08]Mike, thanks so much for joining us. The top search here is just how the hackers got away with this. What do what do we know?

[00:00:14]>> Yeah, Ash. And so, from what we understand, this hack included a lot of pretty high-profile accounts, including the official account for Sephora, the beauty brand, as well as some top executives at the Space Force. Now Ashen uh hacks like this happen all the time.

[00:00:29]Basically there are kind of security flaws that these hackers can exploit.

[00:00:33]But what makes this particular hack interesting is that these particular malicious actors exploited Meta's AI which the company baked into its customer support recently.

[00:00:44]>> H that's really interesting. So it seems like AI is the culprit here. Lot of searches Mike where people are wondering about privacy concerns. Can they turn off the AI setting in Instagram and will it prevent these hacks? like what do we know?

[00:00:57]>> Yeah. So, some nuance here. This was a hack that used Meta's own sort of internal systems. It wasn't like people were using AI to hack into Instagram accounts. Rather, they were going to Meta customer support talking to the AI chatbot that it had there and basically convincing that chatbot to send them the personal, you know, reset information for these high-profile accounts and the AI obliged. It basically did that. So from the individual's perspective here, this is kind of concerning, right?

[00:01:28]Because they don't have any control over what products Meta integrates artificial intelligence into and that's obviously a big concern when there are kind of these security breaches. Now I reached out to Meta recently. They have not yet gotten back to me Ashen, but they have said recently yesterday as a matter of fact that they have patched this particular security flaw and they're working to restore ownership of those hacked accounts back to their original owners.

[00:01:53]Yeah, Mike, just peel back the curtain for me a sec because you've been in all day reaching out to Meta. Are you just like shooting Zuck a text? Like, how does it actually work reaching out to a place like Meta?

[00:02:02]>> Yeah, I'm not shooting Zuck a text exactly. I'm reaching out through email and through other means to some people over at Meta. Basically just trying to confirm whether this story is accurate or not. We should mention that this was first reported by 404 media and then got picked up and confirmed by several other outlets. So, this is, you know, just kind of the way that journalism comes together. you see something crop up and then you want to further that story. You want to kind of get it a little bit ahead of the eight-ball there. And sometimes uh people respond to you, sometimes they don't. And uh that's exactly what happened today. But that's just kind of the way it goes sometimes.

[00:02:34]>> I hear you. Mike, before I let you go, got to ask about President Obama's account because we're seeing a ton of searches wondering, did he get hacked?

[00:02:41]What happened there?

[00:02:43]>> Yeah. So again, some nuance here. The account that got hacked in this particular uh act was not the personal account of the former President Obama.

[00:02:52]Rather, it belonged to the former Obama White House. The Obama administration was pretty early to the social media game. They were the first presidency to really go online in that particular way.

[00:03:02]And those accounts in large part are still up. One of those accounts was hacked. But again, important to separate that account from the account that belongs to the former president who's now private citizen kind of out there, you know, posting as, you know, he would as a private citizen. So that is, uh, you know, kind of the nuance there. Mike Dusky, appreciate you,