Date: 27 December 2024
Those influencers with huge social media followings can sometimes feel invincible, but not even the largest online personalities are immune to cyber attacks. When an influencer’s follower count climbs into the tens or even hundreds of thousands, their account becomes an ever more tempting target for hackers and scammers. If an attacker possesses an account with many followers, they can instead use it to push malware, steal personal information, or do other kinds of fraud.
The first step to boosting account security is to understand why large follower counts paint a target on influencers' backs. Influencers can be protected from cyber threats to their accounts and follow both vigilance, precaution and smart digital habits.
The Appeal of Influencers to Hackers and Scammers
Understanding why influencer accounts attract hackers helps one consider things from a cybercriminal's perspective. When executing attacks, hackers carefully select targets that can provide maximum impact for minimum effort.
Influencers with huge, devoted followings check all the boxes:
Large Potential Reach
The more followers an influencer has, the more accounts a hacker can leverage to distribute malware links, stolen data, fraudulent money-making schemes, and other cyber threats. While compromising a standard account with 500 followers makes a small splash, accessing an influencer account with 500,000 followers causes a tidal wave of exposure.
Built-In Audience Trust
Followers have pre-established trust in the influencers they follow. They look to influencers for advice on products, services, trends, and sometimes even major life decisions. This ingrained trust increases the likelihood that followers will click questionable links or fall for social engineering scams from a hacked influencer account before realizing something is amiss.
Verified Status Symbols
Many influencer accounts feature coveted verification badges that signify legitimacy and authority. These marks of authenticity extend followers' assumptions of trustworthiness, making them even more apt to fall for traps set by hackers with compromised accounts.
Monetization Potential
Savvy influencers make big money promoting brands and products, so their accounts offer attractive money-making potential for fraudsters. Offering to sell a compromised influencer account to the highest bidder can also prove lucrative for cybercriminals motivated by financial gain.
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Common Attack Vectors Targeting Influencers
Cybercriminals employ a variety of tactics to compromise influencer accounts and weaponize their huge follower bases. Here are some of the most common attacks:
Prevalent Methods
Phishing involves using email texts, direct messages, pop-up windows, and other communication channels to trick victims into handing over login credentials or sensitive account details. As more influencers monetize via creator platforms, subscription services, and online stores, hackers employ phishing to gain access and leverage these money-making components.
Even influencers who avoid monetization could have online shopping, banking, or other important accounts tied to the email addresses associated with their social media profiles. By phishing login credentials, hackers penetrate far beyond just social media pages.
SIM Swapping
SIM swapping consists of deactivating a target's mobile phone number and transferring (aka "porting") it to a SIM card controlled by the attacker. With access to two-factor authentication codes sent via text, hackers can then access and take over associated accounts.
Security-savvy influencers who enable two-factor authentication on their social media and other accounts might seem immune to password phishing. However, hackers can bypass password protections altogether by swapping SIMs for a target's phone number.
Malware Infections
Malware describes malicious software programmes used to infect, damage, disable, or gain control of computer systems and networks. Hackers can infiltrate an influencer's computer or mobile device with malware in many ways, from tainted external storage devices to booby-trapped email attachments to compromised apps and programmes.
Once a device is infected, the hacker can assume remote control, access account credentials entered into the device, install keyloggers to capture future credentials and surveil the camera and microphone. This foothold then allows wider account compromise and follower-base exploitation.
Credential Stuffing
When a website suffers a data breach that exposes customers' usernames and passwords, the leaked credentials invariably end up for sale on dark web black markets. Hackers then take these compromised credentials and test them on other platforms through credential stuffing, hoping victims will reuse the same usernames and passwords across accounts.
Even if influencers use unique, complex passwords for all their accounts, they can still be victims of credential stuffing if any of the online services they use suffer breaches. In the event of known breaches, influencers must change their passwords immediately.
Understanding how influencer accounts are commonly hacked can help social media stars tailor their security efforts for maximum protection.
Impacts of Compromised Influencer Accounts
The fallout when a prominent influencer’s account gets successfully phished or otherwise compromised can be extensive, causing harm to followers, brands, and the influencers themselves. Just some potential consequences include:
Follower Data Theft and Vulnerability
Influencers receive followers’ personal information — email addresses and phone numbers, for example — to sign up for newsletter subscriptions or enter contests and giveaways. Hackers who get into an influencer’s account get their hands on an entire follower contact database, ripe for the taking.
Spamming followers with phishing attempts and outright selling their data on dark web marketplaces rank among the likely outcomes when hackers steal follower information. However, the damage can run even deeper if followers reuse passwords or provide sensitive account numbers like credit cards or social security digits to influencers.
Brand Reputation and Financial Damage
Influencer account takeovers frequently target monetization streams, with hackers posing as influencers to scam brands and followers. By compromising just a single influencer account, financial losses to brands paying for fraudulent promotions can quickly mount, not to mention reputation damage when impersonators dupe followers.
Should hackers use account intrusion to directly access an influencer's online store, subscription service, or other revenue-generating platform, they can send sizable amounts into their own pockets. Additionally, motivating hackers to create lots of traffic through indirect means, including phishing followers, brand sponsorships and affiliate networks paying per click or sale.
Loss of Follower Trust and Engagement
Even if hackers fail to access monetization streams, a breach still represents a huge blow to an influencer’s brand trust and community loyalty. Followers offered nothing but apologies and explanations after a hack lost faith, questioning influencers’ legitimacy and competence.
The raw number of followers also invariably drops after hacks, as some followers proactively unfollow compromised accounts. In contrast, others are removed during cleanup efforts by social media security teams. With lower follower counts and less audience trust, influencers struggle to maintain their personal brands and earning power.
Social Engineering Manipulation
They don’t always use compromised influencer accounts to commit financial fraud. Using massive follower numbers to fool people and spread political ideologies, controversial points of view and false information behind a mask of trusted authorities generates some others.
If your account isn’t secured, nefarious thought leaders can puppeteer influencers’ brands, steering followers’ views and decisions on products, politics, investments, and more. Such social engineering, even if identified and shut down quickly, threatens democratic discourse and the well-being of followers.
Since there are so many potential damages to take place when influencers’ accounts get hacked, social media security is a priority not only for online personalities but for the entirety of their communities.
Best Practices for Influencers to Secure Accounts
Just because large follower counts attract hackers doesn't mean that all influencers are doomed to suffer account breaches. Through vigilance, education, and proper technical safeguards, influencers can thwart most cyber threats targeting their accounts.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication
The number one digital security for any online account is two-factor authentication. This is another step in the login process over and above the password. The second factor is typically something that users need to input a randomly generated code that was sent to a trusted device, like their smartphone.
Even if hackers manage to phish an influencer's account password, the code sent to the influencer's phone foils the break-in attempt. As long as influencers keep their devices physically secured, two-factor authentication acts as an unbreakable second gate against intruders.
Avoid Password Reuse
Credential stuffing may be used to do wider account compromises as managing complex, unique passwords to every one of your accounts seems challenging. Generate and fill a strong, unique credential for all accounts with a password manager app, not overloading your memory.
Also, take care not to reuse email addresses across accounts where reasonable, as inboxes often contain password reset links a hacker can leverage as a gateway to wider infiltration.
Delete Unused Accounts
Comb through old, unused social media and online service accounts that may still use outdated security practices or weaker passwords from the past. Deleting or properly securing legacy accounts eliminates backdoor access points hackers could exploit to pivot to more valuable targets.
Limit Account Associations
When you create new online accounts going forward, be careful when you’re asked to provide extra details, such as your phone number. When you can, use secondary burner numbers and emails that aren’t linked to your core accounts.
That way, if one account is compromised, the associated account isn’t able to provide pivots to other accounts based on common verification details. Breach impacts are limited by compartmentalization.
Beware Suspicious Links
Influencers receive sketchy links from cybercriminals on a daily basis in the form of comments, texts, messages and emails in an attempt to compromise accounts or devices. Be especially cautious when clicking links, and maintain constant vigilance when clicking links, especially when they contain shortened URLs from untrusted senders. Links preview destinations before clicking.
You should also configure social media accounts to filter out DMs and comments that are obvious threats, such as malware links or phishing sign-in prompts. Also, turn off automatic link previews so that malicious links won’t load content without clicking.
Monitor Financial Activity
For any unapproved access, charges, withdrawals, or balance adjustments, closely review account activity logs and financial transaction data. Most web services also let users get real-time alerts for logins and account modifications, therefore alerting influencers to hacks earlier.
Think about setting aside a separate prepaid card or bank account to accept online money from sponsored influencer accounts. This means that hackers cannot access your more general funds should they be able to compromise an account and alter payment information.
Seek Professional Security Services
If an influencer has reached a certain level, it’s worth considering professional cybersecurity assistance to feel safe. Our Virtual Cyber Assistant service, for example, is a convenient, cost-effective and flexible way of securing your business or influencer account.
Educate Followers on Security Best Practices
Use platforms to promote better general social media security among followers. Share tips for strong password hygiene, avoiding phishing attempts, and enabling two-factor authentication. Savvy followers with secured accounts prove much less useful to hackers who compromise influencers.
While hackers covet the power of influencer accounts with huge follower bases, proper precautions limit the frequency and impact of account breaches. Spreading security awareness also pays dividends by improving defenses across entire follower communities.
Conclusion
While cybercriminals usually target influencers with a large follower count, the risks are well understood, and robust security measures that minimize these risks are in everyone’s best interest.
Influencers should know what tactics attackers use and the dangers of account breaches when they protect themselves on the web and their audience. In the end, a secure account is good for influencers and their communities, making the digital space safer for everyone.
