Former US President Barack Obama has fallen victim to an online attack, with hackers taking over the control of his official White House account on Instagram. The perpetrators, while handling Obama’s profile, also shared several cryptic stories and posts in a foreign language, further complicating the situation for the Democratic Party leader.
Hackers trick Meta to hack Barack Obama’s Instagram account
On May 31, TMZ reported that Barack Obama’s White House account on Instagram, with the handle name @obamawhitehouse, had been hacked by unidentified hacker(s).
While in control, the mysterious digital intruder posted multiple AI-generated images and Arabic-language messages on the profile, which remained up for hours last Sunday. One of the said posts came with an Arabic caption, which, when translated, read, “The White House is under Shiites’ control.”
In addition to sharing the aforementioned AI-generated images, the hacker updated the bio section of Barack Obama’s Instagram account and posted a slew of stories. The stories featured pictures of two old men, along with Arabic captions.
Nevertheless, Meta ultimately managed to regain control of the profile and restore it to its original state after removing all the hacked posts.
Notably, Barack Obama had not shared any content on his White House Instagram account since leaving office in January 2017. The last legitimate post on the profile, which has over 2.4 million followers, coincided with his last day in the Oval Office and celebrated his two consecutive terms as president.
This is not the first time that hackers have targeted one of Obama’s social media accounts. In 2020, a hacker named Joseph James O’Connor gained control of his X (formerly Twitter) profile and several other celebrities’ accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam. Authorities arrested O’Connor in 2023 and imposed a five-year prison sentence on the hacker, as per Reuters. In 2025, courts also ordered O’Connor to repay $5.40 million worth of Bitcoin as a penalty.
