This week, Microsoft’s official social media account X was hacked. He immediately subscribed to another page and forwarded a message asking how many likes it would take to bring back his office assistant Clippy. Such calls are not new, but the post from the @clippymsftcto account was not a sincere call to resurrect the famous aide. The purpose of this attack was to promote cryptocurrency tokens.
Image source: Microsoft
The concept of the office assistant “Scraper,” introduced in Microsoft Office between 1997 and 2004, was based on research showing that the parts of the brain responsible for using the mouse and keyboard are also responsible for emotional responses when interacting with other people. Therefore, Microsoft suggests that it is appropriate to provide users with an “animated” assistant. This attempt at anthropomorphism caused such a strong negative reaction from users that Microsoft realized the Office Assistant wasn’t popular and shut it down in a comic ad campaign.
Microsoft subsequently caricatured the character over the years. But in this case, things are different. In addition to the hack itself, which is already a serious problem, the attackers used access to the account to promote cryptocurrencies. Microsoft deleted the post related to this incident, but apologized for the post about the return of “Skrepysh” and emphasized that cryptocurrency is not supported. The Verge managed to capture a screenshot of the post before it was deleted.
Image source: The Verge
“We confirm that there was unauthorized access to an account in” said a Microsoft representative. — Account access has been restored and irrelevant messages have been deleted; we are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the incident. ” The deleted post ended with some rather sarcastic advice: “Obtain information about our brands, products, securities, and intellectual property only from official Microsoft sources.”
“Skrepysh” has an interesting history, and over time people’s attitude towards this assistant has become more and more positive. It might be a combination of irony and nostalgia, but people often greet official mentions of this memorable paperclip with excitement.
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