S'pore's Young Lions Instagram account hacked, name changed to "OSAMA"

The account appears to have been deleted.

Joshua Lee | July 03, 2019, 09:06 AM

It looks like the Instagram account of Singapore's Young Lions Football Club was hacked.

This was the football club's Instagram page on July 2, 2019:

The profile name of the page was changed to "OSAMA" while the profile image was swapped out.

The website link was replaced by a URL which linked to an Instagram account with the handle @1peprs.

As of July 2, 2019, the Young Lions' Instagram account only had two videos, one of which was an edited video featuring scenes from Netflix's Umbrella Academy.

The hacked account also published Instagram Stories featuring scenes from Game of Thrones and, rather bizarrely, a PUBG game.

The postings started in the afternoon of July 2, 2019 and by night time, the first video had already amassed over 346,000 comments, in which other Instagram users were tagged -- likely the work of a bot.

By the morning of July 3, 2019, the entire account cannot be found on Instagram. It is unsure if the account has been deleted or hidden.

According to a Redditor, @1peprs has been using bots to spam comments for quite some time:

There's even a YouTube video which claims that this user is a "serial hacker".

It is unsure though which other accounts, aside from the Young Lions, were previously hacked by @1peprs too.

We have reached out to the Young Lions with our enquiries and will update this article when we hear from them.

Young Lions is managed by the Football Association of Singapore (FAS), and has competed in Singapore's top club competition – the Singapore Premier League – since 2003.

Top screen grabs from Young Lions' Instagram account.