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Fans and followers of Jason Derulo were surprised and shocked to see his Twitter account posting disturbing and offensive messages on January 12 around 2:30 P.M. Eastern Time (3:30 A.M. Philippine time, January 13).

Apparently, the American singer-songwriter's Twitter account has been hacked by a group who call themselves “Ray” and “the chuckling squad.”

The offensive posts ranged from racial slurs to profanities to a series of random, nonsensical thoughts.

One Tweet, with the hashtag “chuckling,” said, “All celebs that were hacked were chuckling squad, labeled or not it was us no1 else can do it just how we smoked addison rae dixie anyone u can think of our victims.”

Derulo's Twitter account has been reverted to normal following the attack.

CELEBRITIES AS TARGET

The Chuckling Squad was the same group behind other celebrity hacks including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, singer Mariah Carey, comedian Adam Sandler, and actress Chloë Grace Moretz.

Last November, police arrested an alleged former member of the hacking group.

“He was a member of Chuckling Squad but not anymore. He was an active member for us by providing celebs/public figure [phone] numbers and helped us hack them,” reported Motherboard, which added that the suspect was a minor and thus cannot be named in public.

The news of the arrest was also reported by Vice and Business Insider.

The report also brought to light the scheme being used by the hackers to access private accounts of celebrities and high-profile personalities.

That method is called “SIM swapping” and it involves the hackers finding out the cell phone provider of their target.

They then call the provider and impersonates the celebrity or falsely claim that they are part of his or her staff. They will convince the customer service representatives to transfer the celebrity's phone number to a new SIM card to carry out the crime.

The fraudulent method has understandably alarmed authorities as more and more celebrities are becoming victims of social media hacking.

TIKTOK HIT

Jason Joel Desrouleaux or Jason Derulo was in the music business since 2006 and has achieved fame through the songs "Wiggle," "Talk Dirty," "In My Head," and "Whatcha Say.”

TikTok users may remember him for his hit single, “Savage Love,” which became viral and later on remixed by the popular K-pop group, BTS.

The song was originally released in 2019 as instrumental music by New Zealand music producer Joshua Christian Nanai a.k.a. Jawsh 685. The track was titled "Laxed (Siren Beat).”

A controversy erupted after Derulo used the music for his new song “Savage Love” without permission from Jawsh 685.

The issue was settled and the song was officially named “Savage Love (Laxed - Siren Beat),” with Jawsh 685 being credited as an artist and co-writer.

“Jason first hit me up on my IG and he told me about his plan on adding lyrics to my beat,” said Jawsh 685 in an interview.

“We never really came to an official agreement as I had a great team helping me make the best decisions. His song was pretty catchy, so in the end, we came to an official agreement.”