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Britney Spears ‘Death’ News By Sony Music, Bob Dylan Twitter Accounts Stir Fans Into Frenzy

By Bradley Ryder
Published on: 06:59 PST, Dec 26, 2016

Pop princess, Britney Spears, is not dead — let’s get that out of the way. The “Baby, One More Time” singer is alive and well.

According to her publicist, the gut wrenching news is the result of Sony Music Global and Bob Dylan’s official Twitter accounts being hacked in an elaborate celebrity death hoax. Early on Monday, Spears’ rep confirmed to CNN that the death claims are erroneous and an online breach likely occurred.

Scores of fans on Twitter erupted in frenzy over rumors of Britney Spears’ death. After all, the world is still mourning over the shocking news of George Michael’s sudden death from “heart failure” on Christmas, according to his manager. The Wham! singer was 53, citing a Today report.

Reportedly, someone with access to the @SonyMusicGlobal Twitter account posted a message saying Britney Spears “is dead by accident. We will tell you more soon.” A short time later, a user from the same account posted a string of other messages paying tribute to her life as a result of the untimely end to her life of 35 years.

As one can imagine, a flurry of sympathy followed with #RIP hashtags. Thankfully, the news about Britney’s death was short-lived. and the media spectacle was the result of malicious deception allegedly by an infamous cyber attacker.

Bob Dylan, the 2016 Nobel Prize In Literature winner, was targeted to help bolster the fake message of Spears’ demise. Presumably, the same attacker gained access to the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer’s social media account and posted a message that “Rest in peace @britneyspears,” along with the same melancholy emoji seen on Sony’s account.

In short order, the anonymous group known as OurMine took responsibility for the unauthorized hacking of Britney and Bob’s Twitter accounts. If the name sounds familiar, you’re not hallucinating. The hackers are tied to the 2014 Sony hack, reportedly the largest corporate cyber security breach on record.

Over the summer, OurMine allegedly took over the accounts of prominent blogger and venture capitalist Mark Suster, actor Channing Tatum, Spotify founder Daniel Ek, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few, as Wired wrote. OurMine touted its ability to hack into certain personal and business accounts but claims its motives are not malicious in any manner.

Rather, unlike blackhat hackers, who are known for espionage, crime, and disruption, OurMine claims to be whitehat hackers that help point out vulnerabilities for the greater good. In each of the aforementioned online attacks, the group insists it never changed passwords or used personal information for nefarious purposes.

Wired spoke to an unnamed rep of the three-person group via telephone. Reportedly, they revealed their self-styled motives, which are geared towards helping and not harming.

“We don’t need money, but we are selling security services because there is a lot [of] people [who] want to check their security. We are not blackhat hackers, we are just a security group…we are just trying to tell people that nobody is safe.”

From time to time, celebrities fall victims to death hoaxes. Britney Spears’ fake news is no exception. While some are duped into believing anything posted online, many savvy readers have learned to take the news with a grain of salt.

In the summer hacking, Quora suggested OurMine was not behind the exploitation. Instead, it says the passwords used to access social media accounts were due to a data dump from the so-called dark web.

At this time, there has been no word from Bob Dylan or Britney Spears regarding the pop diva’s death hoax and reported cyber hacking.

[Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for iHeartMedia]

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