Aug. 30, 2019Updated 5:54 p.m. ET
Hackers took over the Twitter account of Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, on Friday and used the account to broadcast a string of racist messages and bomb threats.
In the posts, the attackers claimed that Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters would be bombed, and used Mr. Dorsey’s account to retweet posts from several individuals appearing to claim responsibility for the hack.
The offensive posts were quickly deleted from Mr. Dorsey’s account. It appeared that the hackers used a third-party service called CloudHopper to make posts under Mr. Dorsey’s name. Twitter confirmed that the account had been compromised.
The brief takeover is a reminder of the challenges and risks facing celebrities and public officials who conduct business on Twitter. In 2017, President Trump’s Twitter account was momentarily deactivated by a contractor with the social media company, and security experts worry that world leaders’ social media accounts do not have sufficient protections.
“We’re aware that @jack was compromised and investigating what happened,” the company said in a tweet.
The group that took over Mr. Dorsey’s account Friday called itself Chuckling Squad and posted several hashtags promoting itself. It also posted several messages from Mr. Dorsey’s account using racial slurs and praising Adolf Hitler.
The incident on Friday was not the first time that Mr. Dorsey, who is also the chief executive of the financial technology company Square, has lost control of his Twitter account. In 2016, a group of hackers going by the name OurMine conducted a similar attack that allowed them to post from Mr. Dorsey’s account.
The group also took over social media accounts belonging to Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook.
But OurMine’s messages were not racist or violent. Instead, the hackers claimed they were simply testing the security practices of some of the most influential figures in the technology industry. OurMine also successfully took over a New York Times account and posted a hoax about a missile attack.
This is a developing story and will be updated.