Pfizer Facebook Page Is Hacked By Script Kiddies

Pfizer Facebook Page Is Hacked By Script Kiddies

July 21st, 2011 // 1:17 pm @

Will this prompt Pfizer to abandon Facebook? The drugmaker was already trying to sort out a recent rule change that will no longer allow drugmakers to disable comments posted on newly created pages. And existing pages will no longer be able to do so as of August 15. Unlike a couple of rivals, Pfizer insisted Facebook is part of its ongoing social media strategy .


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But being hacked by the infamous Script Kiddies is unlikely to help that argument inside Pfizer headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Rather than draw attention to its products, Facebook is now a point of discussion about how Pfizer is vulnerable to hacking. The incident occurred last night before Pfizer caught on and removed the breach.

Why Pfizer? The drugmaker is a “corrupt corporate American company guilty of cutting corners and killing people,” one of the hacktivists tells Zahid Raja. “They are guilty of killing people through harmful drugs and clinical tests. For example, their drug Trovan killed 11 Nigerians out of 200 given the drug. We plan to achieve awareness mostly; awareness that the security online is an allusion and also that Pfizer’s crimes are intolerable and we will not deal with them. We will stand up and say, hey, this isn’t right. We will take a stand. Some say that our methods are extreme, but they have to be to achieve our goals. Pfizer is a corrupt giant, so we attacked them. Simple as that.”

Meanwhile, “main sites may be targets, but social media sites, where the most attention is given, are appealing,” a Script Kiddies representative wrote Think. “And yes, there will be bigger breaches. Of who and what I cannot disclose, nor do I know at this point. But their magnitudes will be large.”

As for Pfizer, a spokesman tells us the drugmaker contacted Facebook to ask how it could have happened and plans to share what it learns with other companies. “The good news is that no confidential information related to individuals or the company were breached, but I need to make it very clear that we are committed to using social media channels to communicate and we’ll take this as a learning experience,” he says.

Bruce Grant, a senior vp of business strategy at Digitas Health, a media agency, tells MedAd News out that Script Kiddies did not have a grievance against Pfizer, but were just repeating things they had found in the media. Pfizer was a “villain of opportunity,” he says and the hack was not something that Pfizer could have prevented, since the security issues were all on Facebook’s end.

Ultimately, the incident is a “welcome and useful wakeup call,” and shows drugmakers cannot walk away from Facebook. Overall, he continues to believe that the biggest concern pharma has with Facebook and other social media remains open airing of legitimate issues, such as side effects, rather than hacking. “Our advice is you don’t have a choice as to whether you have a page – your choice is whether you want to maintain appropriate control over the conversation,” he says.

Source: Pharmalot


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