Digital News Report- Thirty-three accounts on Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service, were hacked early Monday morning resulting in mass confusion and panic among the tweet community. Many of the accounts that were hacked were well-known people and groups such as CNN’s Rick Sanchez, President-elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears, and Fox News.
Fox News had the update “Bill O Riley is gay” while Rick Sanchez, who uses Twitter frequently on his CNN program, stated “i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today.” Twitter quickly locked down the accounts as soon as they realized what was happening. By the early afternoon, all the posts made by the attacker had been removed.
“These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can’t remember or get stuck,” the company explained. The company has taken down the compromised support tools until a fix can be made to prevent future attacks.
The hack comes after news of a phishing scheme became known. The scam asked users to “check out a funny blog about you,” which prompted users to input their user details The scam compromised thousands of accounts. As of now there are no connection between the two, but the combination of the two has led to an obviously busy and frustrating week for Twitter staff.
Poor Fox News. LOL