Famous Names Hacked on Twitter

by Nathaniel Ed on January 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am EDT - 224 views

33 famous people and organizations have been hacked on Twitter, a social networking site, including

• Barack Obama
• Fox News
• Britney Spears

Earlier today the hacked accounts spammed malicious messages; one among them, owned by CNN correspondant Rick Sanchez, saying “I am high on crack right now might not be coming to work today”.

Twitter says that the said accounts were compromised using internal support tools that Twitter’s customer service uses for password retrieval systems.

Apparently this isn’t the first time Twitter has had security risks though; in the past it has been spammed by phishers, people who try to trick users into giving out private information through methods such as false login pages or tricking users into downloading malicious password stealing files. Another common phishing problem that Twitter is dealing with is hackers sending out messages that have malicious messages, such as offering free iPhones.

Remember safe internet security when you’re surfing the web. When you login to a website, BE SURE that it’s the correct website, i.e. www.twitter.com. Never open attachments from people you don’t recognise, and be wary about attachments from people you do recognise, because their accounts might have previously been compromised, like Obama and Sanchez’ accounts were. I personally would strongly recommend against playing with the adverts that have games on them, or require you to click on them to do something.

Stay safe!

Sources: Computer World, Computer World Blog

Picture courtesy of Talking Head TV.