Kylian Mbappe’s Twitter Hack: What It Means for Celebrities and How Fans Can Protect Themselves

• by Anthony Orjally
• Advent IM Blog

In August 2024, superstar Kylian Mbappe, forward for Real Madrid and France, found himself at the centre of an unexpected and unusual security breach. Mbappe had his Twitter (X) account hacked, with the attacker using it to post tweets about rival clubs (Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea), memes, and political opinions. The incident didn’t last for long, however given Mbappe’s superstar fame, it caught the attention of many across the world. In this blog, we’ll discuss some details of the hack, previous celebrity related hack stories, and the broader implications for cybersecurity.

The Mbappe Hack… A Prank or something more?

Kylian Mbappe is not just your ordinary footballer, he’s a global superstar. When his account was hacked it wasn’t just at personal inconvenience, it was others potentially being affected too. Quite harmlessly, one of the opinions tweeted from his account was ‘Ronaldo is better than Messi’, which is an ongoing debate amongst football fans. However, having played alongside Lionel Messi and against him in the iconic 2022 World Cup Final, it would be seen as disrespectful not just to the greatest player of all time, but his enormous fan base also – hence why it’s a topic that most high profile footballers tend to avoid.

Following on, a more controversial tweet coming from the Kylian Mbappe twitter account was their opinion on Israel. This is quite possibly the most popular athlete in the entire world right now, therefore tweeting your political stance on such an account could leave a damaging reputation to the player and the brand of Mbappe. Whether Mbappe agrees with the opinion or not is irrelevant, as you can’t hack into such a high profile account and think it’s acceptable to tweet your political stance.

Overall, these posts were seen as harmless though, given the erratic behaviour of the attacker – it was fairly obvious that this was not Kylian Mbappe live tweeting.

The Growing Trend of Celebrity Hacks

Whilst Kylian Mbappe had been fortunate to have his account recovered quickly, reducing the damage to his profile, some celebrities haven’t been so lucky.

In 2020, Kanye West (Ye) and other high profile celebrities had their Twitter accounts hacked and exploited to promote a bitcoin link. The perpetrator, Joseph James O’Connor, had stolen over $110,000 worth of bitcoin from users who unsuspectedly fell for the scam.

Another high profile celebrity, Taylor Swift, had her Instagram hacked in 2016, where the bad actor threatened to release explicit photos of the singer, unless a ransom was paid. There were no consequences in the end for Taylor Swift, however it highlights the importance of keeping on top of security, as someone could have easily released personal photographs and information of the music artist to the public, just for a quick cash grab.

These incidents convey exactly why you need to verify everything you see online. Similarly, with phishing attacks, you can cause a lot of damage to yourself by not verifying information beforehand and it’s the exact same with these stories. As we learned that people can very easily be manipulated to quickly put money into their celebrity icon’s ‘projects’.

These stories also highlight how we need to take care of our own online actions. Whether that be down to believing everything we see on the internet or truly understanding what it is that we’re posting. I wrote about this in a previous blog, as although someone may not be at fault for being hacked, it is down to the social media organisation to combat misinformation that could be spread from that account. Elon Musk introduced to Twitter (X) a ‘community notes’ feature which enables users to provide missing context to tweets or label them as misinformation. However, this feature isn’t 100% reliable as we have seen in recent news stories. Most recently, at the Paris Olympics, a female boxer, Imane Khalif, was the target of mass abuse after it was reported by huge outlets that the fighter was a transgender athlete, meaning it would be unfair for a biological male to be compete in the sport. Community notes were being used to inform people that she was transgender, however in an interview with Imane we learned that this wasn’t the case. Even now, people are under the assumption that she was born with a DSD (disorders of sex development), as it was widely spread – however, there has been no evidence of this whatsoever, nor has the fighter mentioned this anywhere.

This goes to show exactly why we need to think before acting on the internet. For weeks, Imane Khalif was sent abuse for a claim that turned out to be untrue, and now the majority of people that were interested in this story, believe that she has a disability – which has never been confirmed, just speculation. As owner of Twitter, Elon Musk needs to create a safer environment where people can’t abuse the ‘community notes’ feature, as it is a brilliant concept, however when used in the wrong way, it can be extremely harmful.

To conclude, the numerous celebrity hacking incidents illustrates the range of damage that can be caused by a cyber attack on these accounts. From financial scams to personal privacy breaches and tarnished reputations, these hacks can have serious consequences, not only for the celebrities themselves but also for their followers. As the digital world continues to evolve, the importance of security can never be overstated.