SYMC Symantec Corporation

The National Football League became the latest high-profile victim of hackers as the league's official Twitter account was intercepted and wrongly announced the passing of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The NFL quickly deleted the incorrect tweet and said Mr. Goodell was "alive and well," according to Brian McCarthy, the NFL's vice president of corporate communications.

Mr. McCarthy also confirmed that the league's account had been hacked. "We have engaged law enforcement to look into the matter," Mr. McCarthy said. "We are reviewing and strengthening our cybersecurity measures."

A Twitter representative declined to comment on the incident.

The message followed a similar breach in recent days of the account of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. In Mr. Zuckerberg's case, his Twitter and Pinterest accounts were taken over because he reused the password "dadada," according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Zuckerberg's password had appeared last month in a database of more than 100 million usernames and passwords stolen in 2012 from LinkedIn Corp., the person said.

The advice to not re-use passwords is particularly timely at the moment. Beyond the LinkedIn theft, there were also recent leaks of 360 million email addresses and passwords belonging to users of MySpace.com. Since May, the website Leakedsource.com, which sells access to the stolen information, has added close to one billion records to its database, a LeakedSource representative said Monday.

"These kinds of attacks have become more common," said Liam O'Murchu, director of Symantec Corp.'s security response team. "It may not be the case for the NFL, but we often see the reuse of a password is to blame."

The NFL didn't say whether it had recycled its Twitter password or if it had been the victim of a cyberattack before. The NFL uses its Twitter account to report league updates and news.

The fake tweet said, "We regret to inform our fans that our commissioner, Roger Goodell, has passed away. He was 57. #RIP"

The hackers, who haven't been identified, doubled down on their trolling once their initial posting was discovered and quickly removed. They later messaged, "Oi, I said Roger Goodell has died. Don't delete that tweet." Then, with their ruse refuted, they took a knee with a message that read: "Ok, Ok, you amateur detectives win. Good Job"

Mr. O'Murchu said that hundreds of millions of passwords have fallen into the hands of hackers following recent breaches.

"I think we will likely see more of these attacks," he said. "What we are seeing now is like digital graffiti, people are showing that they can do it."

Computers users can protect themselves by never reusing a password and requiring password authentication, Mr. O'Murchu said.

--Robert McMillan contributed to this article.

Write to Ezequiel Minaya at ezequiel.minaya@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 07, 2016 17:25 ET (21:25 GMT)

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