Celebrity Twitter hackers target Britney's four-foot vagina

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 06 January 2009 17:01

Your IT - Home IT

CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez was probably as surprised as the rest of us to discover that he had sent a message to his Twitter followers informing them he was high on crack and likely to be late for work as a result.

Facebook were no doubt none too happy to find their official Twitter account offering an information message pointing people towards a porn site either.

But the real prize for most bizarre, shocking, offensive and strangely funny celebrity hack posting has to go to Britney Spears. Her much publicised, and frankly hugely boring, Twitter account got a lively kick up the pants when it too got hacked.

Britney appeared to be sending her fans the most unlikely, even for the often strangely behaving Spears, message that she wanted to "update you on the size of my vagina."

Apparently, according to the hacked Twitter message, it is "about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth."

A Twitter spokesperson says that they "considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline" promising only to put them back when it is safe to do so.

However, IT security specialists Sophos reckon these embarrassing defacements of celebrity Twitter accounts demonstrate a worrying security problem for Twitter coming on top of the phishing scam.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, told me "Twitter needs to take a long hard look at its security to ensure that this never happens again, and regain the confidence of its members.  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."