Navy Warship’s Facebook Account Hacked To Stream Age Of Empires
In a bizarre turn of events, warship for the US Navy's Facebook page was hacked. See the results.
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For the past several days, someone has been having a lot of fun playing and streaming the original 1997’s classic video game Age of Empires. Now, under normal circumstances, playing Age of Empires doesn’t usually warrant a news headline unless the player has been live-streaming their gaming session from the official Facebook account for the USS Kidd they previously hacked. Apparently, someone has hijacked the page and done nothing else for the past two days but stream Age of Empires.
As first reported by Task & Purpose, the U.S. Navy lost control of the official Facebook page for its destroyer-class warship, the USS Kidd, at 10:26 pm on October 3 and still hasn’t regained control of its account. According to a Navy spokesperson, Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, the U.S. Navy is currently working with Facebook technical support, who have secured access to the USS Kidd’s official social media page where Age of Empires is live streaming. Once the technical support’s security procedures are complete, the Navy will regain access to the hijacked page.
In the meantime, the Age of Empires streams are still on the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer‘s official page. Whoever took control of the page initially live-streamed their 4-hour-long Age of Empires gaming session, under an amusing caption: “Hahahaha.” However, it would seem that the hacker’s gaming skills aren’t as excellent since the video only depicts villagers building some huts and then mining some gold and chopping wood for the remainder of the stream. Another stream quickly followed that on Monday, and another two hours later, that included a different caption, reading: “hi everyone.”
And that wasn’t the end of it – the hacker/streamer live-streamed six videos in total, each one lasting for at least an hour. It would seem that the viewers weren’t satisfied with the quality of the content since whoever played the Age of Empires game never made it past the Stone Age, which was quickly pointed out in the video’s comment section. Additionally, the comments from the page’s 19,000 followers also largely amounted to questions about whose child found the account after the parent forgot to log off and was going on a gaming spree. There was a lot of internet guesswork involved, but assertations that the account was indeed hacked quickly followed, subsequently confirmed by Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman’s statement.
Unfortunately, it’s still unclear if the U.S. Navy regained access to the social media page, which is typically used for sending updates about its crew and movements, with no mention of gaming. The Age of Empires posts remain up. Not to say that the Navy is a stranger to video game streaming, as it has an entire Twitch channel dedicated to video games, where members game and discuss world travel. However, it’s worth mentioning that, in light of the Navy’s loss of access to its warship’s social media page, Twitch was also hacked a few days ago, with the company’s stolen data posted on torrent sites. So maybe the two are linked? That’s highly improbable, but it’s undoubtedly time for U.S. Navy’s Twitch channel to add Age of Empires to their streaming repertoire, as the hijacked Facebook page streamed more than eight hours of content.
