If you were looking for information from Metro’s Twitter account early Monday morning, you were met with posts that included expletives and memes that made it obvious the service’s accounts were hijacked.
The posts started around 3:30 a.m. and lasted about two hours before some posts became marked as “unavailable,” but were not yet been removed entirely from the @WMTA account.
The digital trail of the incident on Metrorail’s information account was virtually erased, with both a post warning users about the breach and a post that seemed to be from the hacker being deleted early Monday morning.
The official Metrorail information account asked people not to follow @WMATA because of the hack before 4 a.m. But moments later that account, @metrorailinfo, was also hacked.
“We aware that Metro’s Twitter accounts @WMATA @MetrorailInfo were hacked and obscene posts were made that do not represent Metro’s organization or culture. The posts will be removed, and our account will be secured. We are working to understand who may be responsible for this breach,” said Sherri L. Ly, a spokeswoman for Metro, in an email to WTOP.
The hacker appeared to have altered the bio of the account and changed the title of it to “the bus police.” The majority of the tweets used explicit or crude language. Some posts asked about Metro’s quality of service and others pretended to be a disgruntled social media manager, not a hacker (But Metro confirmed the account was breached, not borrowed by a scorned employee).
WTOP’s Luke Garrett contributed to this report.