The University of the Philippines’ official Twitter account has been restored after several hours of being hacked under the name “Takashi Murakami”.
According to the University of the Philippines Media and Public Relations Office, which maintains the UP System website (up.edu.ph) and the UP System’s official social media accounts: “Unknown users took over @upsystem on Twitter at 7:20 PM on 25 April, Monday.”
It added: “Since then, the account has been renamed and has posted content not affiliated with the University. The UP MPRO has been trying to retrieve the @upsystem account as soon as possible.”
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The account name was changed to Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist known for his colorful artworks, while its profile, cover photos, and biography information were removed.
The account’s location was also changed to Tokyo even as the university-related contents remained still posted in the Twitter account with 207,500 followers.
UP has said the incident has deprived “its online constituency on Twitter of important announcements, news stories, and other online content that the Office publishes on the University’s website and promotes on its social media accounts.”
The UP MPRO asked UP community members “to keep abreast with the latest announcements, news stories, and online features from UP via the official accounts on other social media platforms.”
