My guess is this has nothing to do with the phishing attacks that started on Twitter a couple of days ago. But a few minutes ago the official Fox News Twitter account posted “Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay” (referring to the host of the popular Fox show O’Reilly Factor), right after a legitimate message about making turkey lettuce wraps.
My guess is they’re just finding out about it now, and realizing their password, which was probably “password,” has been changed. Twitter will promptly restore the account to its rightful owners, I’m sure. But here’s my question – if you’ve had your Twitter account hacked, how long did it take you to get it back?
Update: Ok, this is turning into a coordinated attack or one heck of a coincidence. The official Britney Spears Twitter account (which launched in October) also appears to have been hacked Any others?
Update 2: We’ve got another winner: Rick Sanchez from CNN, who’s apparently not going to make it to work today because he’s “high on crack right now.”
Update 3: Et Tu, Facebook? (see comments for bonus hack on Obama’s account)
Update 4: Next! Huffington Post goes down too:
Update 5: 33 accounts were hacked after Twitter’s internal admin tools were compromised.
Is anyone really surprised that Faux was easy to fool? At any rate, I think the real question is should someone who was dumb enough to enter login info into a URL that was clearly not Twitter be allowed to have their account back? At what point is someone simply not smart enough to be on the internet?
I bet is was those Magpie guys… While they are deleting all the hacked accounts, they should delete magpie too!
I just assume it was just a plain old dictionary attack.
This is fantastic.
haha how so? i dont think this is some good news but yet it is pretty interesting to hear about
Create or join a crunchie’s chat group at http://groups.im/
Looks like job cuts are coming to Fox.
Damn it I wanted to report on this first!
Good catch. I thought it might be phishing too, but that account isn’t following anyone so no one could have DM’ed them – so I figure it couldn’t have been a direct message phishing attack. I wonder how much anyone pays attention to that RSS fed account anyway. I guess we’ll find out!
I sent the tip to you and Michael at the same time… Mike’s quick with the keys…
Looks like @britneyspears got hacked too..
“@britneyspears HI Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my vagina. Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth. 2 minutes ago from web”
Somebody hold my feet. I’m going in. Hope the hell it doesn’t snap shut!
Notice how techcrunch thinks ‘vagina’ is a horrible word. They had to fuzz it out. Now I would understand that for venacular like ‘pussy’, but for academic, physiological verbage? Huh.
I think the size reference was the vulgar part. I would have blurred that part of the post myself.
JP
Don’t be scared… I fell into here when Solo knocked me off Jabba’s sailbarge.
LOL, nice ref Boba…
Ah, it’s been up there for one hour now…
I saw that little blurb about the Mr. Bill O’Reilly and wondered what took them [Foxnews] so long to make a statement like that about one of America’s greatest know it alls.
@ricksanchezcnn also appears to have been hacked, since apparently he is high on crack. Could it be an inside job?
And now it’s gone…
Um, I think Rick Sanchez’ twitter account at CNN has just been hacked into, too..he just sent out a tweet that he is high on crack and won’t be in to work today!
you’d think if someone went through the trouble of hacking the fox news twitter account, they’d take the time to spell bill o’s name right.
TCers – Your facebook connect function seems to not know who I am. It shows my pic but has some random numbers as my name. and the link to my profile is broken….just an fyi
yeah, all the messages are down now. guess the Twitter guys arrived at the office.
actually, the hacked tweets were more interesting than the original tweets =)
It looks like Twitter is having an issue….
http://twitter....uses/1097407570
The page you are referring to in your snapshot tool doesn’t exist…
I can’t be sure, but this may be happening to Barack Obama’s Twitter account which for the first time in a while updated. Seems like an odd place for an opinion poll so I suspect something fishy.
See here: http://twitter.com/BarackObama
The erroneous tweet has since been removed.
yeah, apparently it was hacked too, with a link to a survey. different style but the timing is suspicious. If anyone has a screen shot of it, pls send it in.
here it is: http://dustincu...0105-093630.jpg
Here you go Mike
http://i39.tiny....com/e7y0rb.jpg
Well, at least they spelled Barackcorrectly.
It’s about time Fox news came out with the truth about Bill. Wish Steve Jobs had a Twitter account so someone can post on his health. :-p Or does he?
Yeah… his health is still none of your business. i don’t even care if you are an executive at Apple, his health is none of your damn business.
Like hell it doesn’t. It directly relates to the price my apple stock brings, and your telling me it’s none of my business. REALLY?
Mike, did you really blur out the word ‘vagina’ in the britney spears screenshot?
When did vagina become a bad word, and when did techcrunch lose it’s edge?
i dunno. i just didn’t want all the freak out comments.
…yet you left in the “4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth”?
Now you got them.
Did you really need to blur out the word “vagina” in that screen shot? Arrington, are you that afraid of the female body?
i dunno. i haven’t had to deal with this specific case before. it just doesn’t pop up that often here at techcrunch.
apparently techcrunchUK has no hesitation: http://uk.techc...it-aint-pretty/
No more blurry vaginas please. Reminds me of my drunken youth.
@bob… best comment ever, i can’t reply to you, but truly, best comment ever
A few more tweets came out of @ricksanchezcnn, but most were quickly deleted. Here are a few that I managed to get a screenshot of:
http://chris24....0105-124522.png
This is hilarious especially the Britney Spears one!
@barackobama
@BarackObama posted a fishy “free gas card” survey link, and @Facebook just posted an obscene link.
Looks widespread.
I think even @facebook’s twitter account was hacked. It posted some spam link just few minutes ago.
I wonder what’s going on!
We picked up Britney’s hack just now on TechCrunch UK:
http://uk.techc...it-aint-pretty/
Yeah, we’re pretty free and easy over here in the U of K.
Here’s the @facebook one:
http://skitch.c...yougetlaid.info
Still up:
http://twitter....atus/1097561415
… but I doubt for long.
Twitter is now showing warning message to users about such scam…
http://twitter....gins.com/login/
is one of such phishing site looks like twitter.com
Heh – it’s quite amusing, you must admit.
Sorry Mike, I have to do the obligatory plug though – If Britney (or Sony BMG, I presume) had used a company like http://wearesocial.net/ to advise her (as Stephen Fry has done for his Twitter presence), she wouldn’t be in this situation…
Don’t forget @Facebook
Guess you love Twitter too much, Michael.
I can daily see a post or two on it.
@barackobama as well http://twitpic.com/zxep
Do you think all the web apps that use YOUR twitter username and password are safe… A new twitter app comes out and everyone jumps on it, especially if it is techcrunched…
you really have to think twice before using any third party app that needs your twitter username and pass…
http://tinyurl.com/9jd9zc
Why are you so sure the the official Fox News Twitter account’s twit is fake?
O’Reilly is gay? I always knew he and Brit Hume were “involved.”
An ongoing and frequently updated list of Twitter accounts that have been compromised and used to send phishing messages is posted at my blog : http://ungravenimage.com as a service for Twitter followers and friends.
I am not a tech person, social media specialist or marketing guru. This posting ongoing blog posting is not self serving as it promotes nothing I do, just helps.
The goal of it is to remove it as all the Twitter people on it who change their password are removed one by one and reestablished in their Twitter identities.
I am an artist with an new theory of Post Conceptual Art , which also happens to be the first religious theory of art to come from the USA.
Judy Rey Wasserman
This might finally push twitter to use something like oAuth. I predict they will launch it by next week and it will be required by every third party app.
updated again. Huffington Post account hacked.
Arrington, you better change your password before the hackers start posting “Mike Arrington is homo” on your account.
why? I feel kind of left out.
I said the same thing. I feel kinda sad that no one broke into my account to post mean things.
Its doubtful that all these high profile users all fell for a phishing scheme. More likely, twitter has a hole exposing users passwords (or changing them) to anyone who knows the exploit.
The fact that Obamas FB account was also hacked, leads me to believe that twitter has a exploit showing in plain text the passwords of their users.
I wonder how were these hacks executed. Was it a pw dictionary or rainbow table attack (if so Twitter has to fix this) or was it user negligence/stupidity?
In any event, it seems that the PW were reset by Twitter’s support team fairly quickly once they were informed on the events.
Phishing. Thats what it took.
Twitter does not rate limit login attempts, so it’s pretty easy to hack accounts using a dictionary attack.
If your password is not a dictionary word, you’re safe.
Twitter really should change this, though.
WOW … Just emerged from Brittney’s vagi** … flashlights batteries were running out, so I had to re-surface.
I’m glad that it didn’t shut. That would be a disaster !!
What the heck is Power Twitter?
Nevermind. I thought it was Twitter’s new revenue model and Mike was a beta tester. It’s just a Firefox plugin mentioned: http://www.tech...and-a-lot-more/
I think its amazing to see that the celebrity twitters are getting affected by the whole phishing situation that started over the weekend. I hope it starts to die down soon. But, there are going to be some random morons that give out their password to fake DM messages.
I’m assuming the people that find these lame-brain pranks funny are not Twitter users. To have a power-crazed freak running rampant through a community people value is no laughing matter. I am not amused. I do however, hope they find the bugger and let some of us take a crack at schooling him the old-fashioned way.
Kris .. with all due respect : Get a life .
Chill ….
Kris,
With NO respect. Get off the internet and back into the kitchen.
You have no business being here.
Life & Satan, your comments are so witty, and insights so profound…. I didn’t realize I had wandered into MySpace.
I don’t think hi-jacking anyone’s account is funny…
…but I have to admit that the messages that were posted were pretty funny. Especially the Rick Sanchez one.
Yes, hi-jacking someone’s account is funny .. specially when moronic security measures are in place.
We aren’t talking about nuclear secrets or credit card #s or SS numbers. This is some stupid tech-based ’social network’ used for meaningless purposes.
Satan … be nice.
And this comment about Brittney’s vagina size ” about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth” is NOT TRUE at all.
I’ve measured it and its true length is 5.4 ft wide. The razor sharp teeth is true though.
Twitter post a status update: http://status.t...ituation-stable
add Leo to the list
most hilarious thing ive seen in 2k9 thus far
Seriously, 500$ says that twitter had a major exploit that let attackers see the plain text password of any user they chose.
500 more says that they downplay the issue as being not that serious.
I bet Twitter’s database was hacked
If twitter is asking you to change your passwords already, You better damn well change any passwords elsewhere that use the same info as on twitter -
Arrington, if you use the same pass for any of TC’s stuff that you do on twitter, I would consider changing it. Im quite confident that a tech guy like yourself doesnt use a global password though, so likely no issue