Popular Twitter accounts hacked to publish Turkish threats against Dutch

A number of popular Dutch twitter accounts, including that of Amnesty International, Caro Emerald and Donald Duck, were hacked into and hijacked. The hijackers used the accounts to spread Turkish threats and anti-Dutch propaganda, RTL Nieuws reports.

The tweets called the Netherlands and Germany Nazi countries and included a link that takes you to a YouTube video showing a compilation of speeches by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The accompanying text warns not to test Turkey's patience.

This seems to be directly linked to the political fallout between Turkey and the Netherlands over the weekend. Erdogan accused the Netherlands of fascism and Nazism after the Netherlands refused to let two Turkish ministers campaign in Rotterdam for a Turkish referendum that would give Erdogan more power. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that she supported the Netherlands in this decision.

According to RTL, the Turkish hackers hijacked the Twitter accounts by using a poorly protected Twitter app - the Dutch TwitterCounter. The app has access to accounts and keeps track of things like your followers. The app was hacked three months ago too. TwitterCounter is investigating the hack, CEO Omer Ginor said to RTL Z. "We've blocked the ability to post and generated a new key for connection with Twitter."

This is the third cyber attack against the Netherlands this week. On Sunday and Monday hundreds of Dutch sites, including NL Times, were the targets of attacks and hacks. Some sites were hijacked and had Turkish messages left on them. On Tuesday voting aids Stemwijzer and Kieskompas were offline for most of the day due to repeated DDoS attacks.