False message sent by hackers

More security problems have cropped up for Twitter, the micro-blogging service, as the Twitter accounts of 33 celebrities and organizations were hacked. These included the president-elect, Barack Obama, pop star Britney Spears, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez and Fox News.

The company said it discovered the breach early Monday morning and quickly locked down the accounts. Control of the accounts has since been returned to the rightful owners.

But short-lived as it was, the breach was long enough for the hackers to send false and offensive messages through the hacked accounts. The Rick Sanchez account sent a message saying that he was “high on crack right now and might not be coming into work today.” The Britney Spears account appeared to update the reader about the astonishing dimensions of her private parts. The Fox News account broke the news that its popular talk show host Bill O’Reilly had other sexual preferences.

Twitter said the system’s support tools had been attacked. The hacker proceeded to reset the information on some accounts and sent out the malicious messages. The company quickly took the support tools offline. Twitter said they will not put the support-tools system back online until they are sure it is secure.

The vicious twit on the celebrities came after a more alarming episode of phishing scams last weekend.

Everyday users of Twitter received direct messages and e-mails that tempted them with free iPhone offers or other bait to trick them into providing usernames and passwords to their accounts.

Users were led to a page that resembled the Twitter front page. In a second wave of phishing spam, users who followed the provided links landed on sites that asked for user names, passwords, and even cell phone numbers.

The bogus Twitter site had the address, twitter.access-login.com/login.

The hackers then put in a variation where the same address minus the “/login” part would land on a bogus Facebook front page. In fact, whatever address was used that ended with “.access-login.com” would eventually arrive at the fake Facebook page.

Internet safety experts applauded the speed of Twitter’s response to the hacking attacks. They also noted that the weekend hacking involved the first known attacks on Twitter, a social networking site whose popularity has increased in recent months.

The attacks may be an indication that hackers look at social networking sites as fertile grounds for stealing account information from people and using it against them.

Safety Tips:

* Avoid following e-mail links. In case you do, check carefully the URL before you disclose sensitive information.

* Use different passwords for different online accounts. People tend to use identical passwords for various accounts, which puts them at risk when one account is hacked.