Twitter hacked
January 5, 2009 | Written by Darius Razgaitis
Looks like my colleague Yan’s 2009 "un-predictions" are already starting to come true. "Hope it doesn’t happen in 2009" prediction #2 was a wish against spam on Twitter. Well, it looks like hackers have been able to access the accounts of and send spam messages from:
(the offending posts have already been taken down)
From ReadWriteWeb:
Twitter Security Collapses; Obama, Fox and Britney Accounts Hacked
Days after a wave of phishing attacks fooled thousands of Twitter users, it appears that another security hole has been found by…someone. Obama’s account, unused since election day, sent out an affiliate link to a survey with a gas card prize, Fox News said that "Bill O’Reily is gay" (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and Britney Spears’ made a lewd post about her anatomy. Rick Sanchez, the Twitter loving CNN anchor, says he’s "high on crack and might not be coming into work today."
(click through for screenshots above or on Techcrunch)
Clearly, this will be a major blow to Twitter as they attempt to build a secure enterprise monetization strategy. Twitter’s reputation has already been damaged by technology hiccups, fail whales, and questionable user authenticity, certainly leading some marketing execs to wonder how Twitter could help their company (or hurt). Will Twitter manage to retain its largest users and continue to attract new ones despite these troubles?
Twitter has not yet addressed these latest attacks, although they did post on their blog about the phishing scam this weekend.
As a side story — did anyone note how Barack Obama’s Twitter account has not been updated since November 5? I think that speaks more to Twitter’s use as a tactical campaign tool versus as an ongoing communications and reputation management tool.
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