Twitter accounts of Britney, Obama hijacked

BANGALORE, INDIA: The phishing terror that waved over thousands of twitter users is again on spotlight. There seems to be another security hole is found in Twitter.

Micro blogging site Twitter got hard hit with a major hack that left at least 33 accounts exposed, including those of pop singer Britney Spears, President-electBarack Obama, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and commentator Bill O'Reilly.

As per the media reports, the hackers used their access to the celebrity sites to inject prank posts.

The attackers gained access to numerous accounts through a widespread phishing attack launched over the weekend.

The attack is said to have followed a phishing scam that duped members of the micro-blogging service into following a link to a fake Twitter homepage. Hackers had created a fake website in a bid to steal logins and passwords.

That hackers made embarrassing alteration in the profiles of celebrities, with fake confessions such as Bill O'Reilly was gay and nasty details about pop diva Britney's private parts.

"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," wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post.

He said this was 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," he added.

However, according to Twitter, the celebrity hacks and the phishing attacks aimed at Twitter users were not related.

While the phishing scampaigns was to purloin login credentials, the aim of the impersonation of celebrities appeared to be the embarrassment of the rich and famous, it said.