One of England’s greatest-ever cricketers, Sir Ian Botham, appeared to have had his offficial Twitter hacked yesterday as an obscene picture unexpectedly appeared on the sportsman’s feed, according to the Evening Standard.

The single post was accompanied by the message, “What are you thinking…. xx”.  Botham was rapidly warned by friend and Welsh football pundit Robbie Savage that he had had his Twitter hacked, “Mate I think you’ve been hacked.”.

Botham rapidly regained control of the account, and Tweeted, “I would like to thank the hacker….I’ve just got 500 hits in 20 mins !!”

Twitter hacked: ‘Beefy’

In his column in the Daily Mirror newspaper, ‘Beefy’ said, “For those of you on Twitter who may have seen a distasteful photo from my account yesterday, let me assure you it was the result of someone hacking into it. I’ve played a few jokes in my time, but this was pathetic.”

“My old mate and fellow Mirror columnist Robbie Savage was straight on to me to change my password – which I’ve done. I’ve also asked the boffins in the Sky tech department to see how I can stop it happening again.”

Veteran security writer and researcher Graham Cluley wrote, “Let’s hope that Sir Ian Botham has now properly secured his Twitter account and other social media assets more effectively. It would be terrible if future hacks would cause his fans to boycott his future tweets.

The only silver lining is that Ian Botham is now trending on Twitter.”

More followers after picture

Botham too saw the silver lining to the hack, saying, “If some keyboard warrior has nothing better to do than post silly pictures, more fool them. The only impact it has had on me bizarrely is to give me more followers – strange.”

A We Live Security guide to how and why passwords can be hacked – and how to stop it – can be found here.

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