Real Madrid 'announce' Lionel Messi transfer in new Twitter hack days after Angel Di Maria to Barcelona hoax

Messi remains a Barcelona player
AFP/Getty Images
Tom Doyle26 August 2017

Real Madrid's official Twitter account 'welcomed' Barcelona legend Lionel Messi to the club in an apparent hack on Saturday morning.

Just days after Barcelona's account was taken over by hackers OurMine, which announced Paris Saint-Germain's Angel Di Maria had joined the club as a hoax, the group was at it again, this time on the Champions League winners' account.

At 5.30am BST, accompanied by a video of Messi scoring for Barcelona against Real Madrid, a post on Real's Twitter said: "Benvingut Messi! B!Bienvenido Messi! Welcome Messi! Bienvenue Messi! #Messi."

The group, which has hacked a series of high-profile accounts over the past 12 months, then followed it up with a series of tweets claiming responsibility for the hacking, saying: "Internet security is s*** and we proved that."

The post went viral, with over 27,000 retweets in the first 45 minutes of it being up.

The tweets remained public for around 90 minutes before they disappeared from Real's Spanish and English language feeds, though one post still remained on the club's Japanese account at 7.30am BST.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.

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