Multiple Twitter Accounts Hacked: Britney, Bill O’Reilly, More

: Image via CrunchBase

First it was phishing on Twitter, now it's hacking. It looks as though several high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked this morning, including the accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Britney Spears, Facebook and several others.

Twitter users around the globe seem to be running for cover, trying to figure out what to do.

Here is the official word from Twitter:

This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been “hacked” including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama (who has not been Twittering since becoming the president elect due to transition issues). We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack, and others are now back in control of their accounts.

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.

Most of the hacked accounts displayed somewhat humorous messages (below, courtesy of TechCrunch) but it makes you wonder how secure Twitter really is at this point...

twitter1 Multiple Twitter Accounts Hacked: Britney, Bill OReilly, More