Hackers Tell Off Gov’t after Taking Control of Safaricom Twitter Account

Safaricom Twitter accounts were on Wednesday night hacked by unknown people who used the platforms to send controversial tweets.

In one of the tweets that caused a stir online, the hackers trashed the government’s demand that the next Safaricom CEO should be a Kenyan national.

The tweet made via @safaricomPLC said the government should first sort out the management of some State corporations that were run down by Kenyan CEOs.

“Let the Government first improve management in NHIF, Kenya Airways, Kenya Pipeline, Mumias Sugar, Muhoroni Sugar and many other organizations that have deliberately been run down by state appointees before they can think of imposing their choice on Safaricom,” read the tweet.

The company's customer care Twitter handle @Safaricom_care was also affected, with hackers using it to send different messages.

In a statement on Thursday, Safaricom attributed the tweets to a system glitch and apologized to its customers.

"Good morning. We apologize for the series of tweets that went out from our official accounts last night.
We had a system glitch that has since been rectified. Thank you," the company tweeted.

This comes days after the company erroneously sent a message to several subscribers threatening to shut down their sim cards if they failed to top up Sh5 airtime.

“Dear Customer, your line is about to get deleted from the network. DON’T let this happen. Simply top up your line with Ksh 5 or more to activate it," the message read.

The telecommunications company later apologized and asked customers to ignore the message.

“Dear customer we apologize for the erroneous communication about the deletion of your line sent to you on 29th June 2019. Please ignore this message,” Safaricom said.