Tesla's Twitter back after hackers hijack feed

SAN MATEO, Calif.—The Twitter accounts for Tesla Motors Ltd. and its founder Elon Musk were breached Saturday afternoon.

Until they were deleted, a stream of uncharacteristic tweets—captured in this screenshot—promised free Teslas for people who followed "Ripprgang & @wheresAMP" and crowed "The dragon strikes again @chf060."

The group or person that briefly took over the account identified itself as Ripprgang. Twitter has suspended that account, which belonged to an individual or group called "Devin Bharath."

Other Twitter users shared screen shots of a hijacked Twitter account for @Elonmusk, the founder of Tesla. It had been temporarily taken over by a hacker calling his or herself "OneTrueMusk." Both hacks directed readers to a residence in Oswego, Illinois.

A representative for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Tesla's @teslamotors has 564,000 Twitter followers. Musk has 2 million. He regularly teases news on Tesla or another of his companies, SpaceX, on that account.

The Twitter and Facebook accounts of major companies and well-known individuals are regularly hijacked, sometimes for hours. In February, Chipotle apologized for offensive comments made when its account was breached. The month before, Crayola apologized for a hack that posted sexual jokes to its Facebook page, which has 2.4 million followers.