Hacker attacks on celebrity Twitter accounts have
further raised concerns over security at the social networking and
micro-blogging service.
Twitter members were first hit by
phishing and spam attacks at the weekend, but the defacement of
celebrity accounts are more worrying, said security firm
Sophos.
In the latest attacks, hackers have targeted the accounts of 33
high-profile Twitter users, including US president-elect
Barack Obama and pop
star Britney Spears.
The message walls of the affected accounts were defaced with
offensive or embarrassing messages, which have been removed by
Twitter.
The attacks were carried out by hacking into administration
tools that are normally accessible only by Twitter's technical
support team.
These attacks are more serious than phishing because Twitter's
systems potentially exposed every account to being taken over, said
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"This shocking start to the year for Twitter should send a stark
warning to any online company holding details of its users that it
needs to make certain it has proper security in place to prevent
illegitimate access," he said.
Twitter said in a
blog posting that it considered the breach to be very serious
and that the support tools would be offline until they are made
secure.
Referring to both attacks, the blog said Twitter's on-call team
was able to attend to the matter quickly and prevent too many
people from being affected.