Old Bitly Links Are Being Hijacked

Attackers hijacked expired Bitly short links from major brands and public figures, including Burger King, McDonald's, and Donald Trump, by re-registering the old links to redirect users to unrelated and potentially harmful content such as Wikipedia pages about Nazi concentration camps and 9/11. Bitly confirmed the security vulnerability on November 15, 2026, stating that bad actors exploited inactive links to repurpose them, and the company subsequently suspended the involved accounts and disabled the affected links.