hey you, don’t look at a digital screen all day, theres a world out there that you’re missing out on. (:After receiving these emails, users flooded Twitter with screenshots of these strange messages. It didn’t take much time for them to guess it was down to a hack.
https://twitter.com/AlishaRai/status/1180854119604477957
- AlishaRai
https://twitter.com/InayaAjaz/status/1180873917600276480
- InayaAjaz
https://twitter.com/FunnelFiasco/status/1180818682701914112
- FunnelFiasco
Some of the recipients even praised the hacker for being nice.
https://twitter.com/DesirontCeline/status/1180790713375711232
- DesirontCeline
https://twitter.com/mmmaldoy/status/1180806201531158530
- mmmaldoy
It quickly turned out that the incident was real. According to Motherboard, the guy with the alias Nathan managed to hack TOMS Shoes mailing list. Nonetheless, it seemed to be more jokey rather than with malicious intent. He aimed to send a positive message. As he told Motherboard,
I had TOMS hacked for quite a while, but with a busy life and no malicious intent, it was pretty useless to have them hacked… By this point responsible disclosure is not a option. So I thought I may as well send out a message I believe in just for fun. End purpose was to spread my message to a large amount of people.He even reassured people about the safety of their data (at least from his side) via Tweets.
https://twitter.com/tomsatg1/status/1180809650347790336
- tomsatg1
He also revealed what motivated the emails:
seems young people now just avoid communication and look at their phone screen/plug headphones in to avoid talking. I hope some people liked my message (:
— . (@tomsatg1) October 6, 2019
https://twitter.com/TOMS/status/1180884298259263490
- TOMS
While it didn’t take much for the users to guess the site was hacked, the firm itself took several hours to confirm. This enraged many users as well.
https://twitter.com/chloe_bond/status/1180890336295559169
- chloe_bond
https://twitter.com/FlutterbyVoyage/status/1181199146289631233
- FlutterbyVoyage
Currently, we don’t know many details about how exactly the events happened with TOMS. Nor has the hacker revealed how he got the mailing list.
TOMS has mentioned there will be ongoing investigations, let’s wait for the details to unveil.
Also, do let us know your thoughts about this incident.