Twitter hacked, Fox News and celebrity accounts fall victim

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Many users got a shock when checking some twitter accounts like, Foxnews, Britney speaks, Barrack Obama, and many others. An attacked launched against celebrity twitter accounts is inserting crude headlines such as "Breaking, Bill O Riley is gay" (misspelling his name) on the Fox News Twitter page.

Twitter has responded to the attack with a blog posting detailing the hack involved. According to a Twitter spokesperson "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. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure".

Images were taken of the attack on pages such as, Fox News, Britney Spears, CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez, and the Facebook page shown below:

Images Courtesy of: www.techcrunch.com

Twitter has also posted phishing tips inside of their blog to help users remain safe.

(1 reply) #1 Glendi on 05 Jan 2009 - 19:55

lol

#1.1 darkpuma on 05 Jan 2009 - 22:07

Glendi said,

mind if i lol with you?

#2 Windows7even on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:03

owned

#3 +Lyric on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:05

LMAO

(1 reply) #4 +Rappy on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:06

Britney comment is priceless!

#4.1 Vakerorokero on 07 Aug 2009 - 01:34

Hey Britney, tell us something we don't know!

the sad thing, Britney's twitter wasn't hacked.

(4 replies) #5 episode on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:09

So wait, all the people that run those twitter accounts were dumb enough to fall for the phish?

#5.1 lylesback2 on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:19

episode said,

Appears so. Can't believe he actually got celebrity pages too.

#5.2 episode on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:50

lylesback2 said,

You would think that the people that run the Rick Sanchez, foxnews, and facebook twitters would be at least somewhat tech oriented. Enough not to fall for a simple phish.

The Britney Spears one is probably a moron, though.

#5.3 Mike Frett on 05 Jan 2009 - 21:16

No, those news people are idiots when it comes to computers and tech. You should hear them sometimes, they even admit it.

#5.4 Homer Smith on 14 Feb 2009 - 14:33

They didn't??
A twitter support script in the site was accessed by people who shouldn't have had access and all they had to know was the username - then put that in and inserted a new email :l

#6 +M2Ys4U on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:10

Brilliant.

(3 replies) #7 iLinK on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:24

"The exploit seem to of come from a phishing scam sent to twitter users"

This even is more hilarious !

#7.1 lylesback2 on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:35

iLinK said,

no, This is even more hilarious!

#7.2 DomZ on 05 Jan 2009 - 23:42

#7.3 +Kirkburn on 06 Jan 2009 - 13:11

iLink, that's a frequent grammar error, caused by people mishearing "to have come". Jeez.

(1 reply) #8 -Hiroshi- on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:47

LoL Yeah, when I saw Rick Sanchez' post, I was like.. ... what?

#8.1 Vakerorokero on 07 Aug 2009 - 01:35

I was going to watch his show just because of that post. probably was going to appear dressed as a luchador.

#9 coolmob on 05 Jan 2009 - 20:49

looks like the someones after twitter like a mad cow. off late twitter has been getting banged every other day now.

#10 +Obi Wong on 05 Jan 2009 - 21:12

hahahaha
excellent

(1 reply) #11 +0sm3l on 05 Jan 2009 - 21:15

People if you haven't heard... Neowin is closing down, all you need to do to stop this from happening is email me with your username and password so I can tell the admins that you don't want this to happen... act now!

JUST KIDDING! lol

#11.1 Glendi on 05 Jan 2009 - 21:50

I'm sending you the details! Please keep Neowin alive ;_;...

lol

#12 DomZ on 05 Jan 2009 - 23:43

It's quite shocking that the facebook one got fished, be interesting if some of the passwords used are used elsewhere...

#13 briley on 06 Jan 2009 - 00:10

From the Twitter blog post:

What Happened?

The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend. 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. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure.

#14 Tikitiki on 06 Jan 2009 - 00:29

ouch. From a development perspective, this is probably one of the worst things that could happen

#15 HalcyonX12 on 06 Jan 2009 - 01:05

Normally I'm not a fan of messing up web pages just to be an anus but this is just awesome.

#16 osirisX on 06 Jan 2009 - 01:31

The Britney comment is hilarious. She needs to post more.

#17 McDave on 06 Jan 2009 - 02:10

Not a very good week for twitter is it...

#18 vipwoody on 06 Jan 2009 - 02:51

LOL

#19 cork1958 on 06 Jan 2009 - 12:45

Man, the "twits" got hacked. They deserve it too!!

#20 TheOnlyHmmmm on 06 Jan 2009 - 14:49

Sweet.....

#21 Ficman on 06 Jan 2009 - 17:38

Nice

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