Someone hacked a U.S. Navy Facebook page to stream Age of Empires gameplay

On 3 October, the U.S. Navy lost control of the Facebook account of the USS Kidd. The Navy wasn’t able to regain control of their account for a while, and whoever hacked the page had been livestreaming game sessions of the game Age of Empires—a historical real-time strategy video game.

“The official Facebook page for USS Kidd (DDG 100) was hacked… We are currently working with Facebook technical support to resolve the issue,” said Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a Navy spokesperson on 5 October.

It’s not clear when the U.S. Navy was able to regain control. Both Vice and Task & Purpose reported that videos of several livestreams by the hacker were still available to watch on Thursday, 7 October. But as of now, 10 October, it seems like the the livestreams have disappeared from the page—which likely means that the Navy has now gained back control of their page.

The USS Kidd is a Navy ship which, fun fact, joined the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 two days after it went missing over the South China Sea. Previously, the Facebook page for the ship had mostly just been videos of the ship and the people on it.

The first Age of Empires livestream which appeared on the USS Kidd’s Facebook account happened on 3 October, with the caption: “Hahahaha”. After that, the hacker livestreamed more gameplay five more times, each time for at least an hour. Vice also noted that whoever was playing “sucks” because “they never make it past the Stone Age”.

The comments on the videos were sparse, but they were mostly questions about who’s son or daughter was going on a gaming spree, followed by assertions that the account was hacked. The comments were also mostly from confused family members of sailors. 

In 2020, the U.S. Army’s Twitter Account for Fort Bragg tweeted a horny reply to an OnlyFans model. The Army claimed the account had been hacked, but an investigation revealed that a civilian with access to Fort Bragg’s twitter handle messed up and forgot to log back into their personal account.

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