Twitter accounts hacked; passwords revealed online

London, Dec 15: 'Hacking' seem to be the most widely used word in the online world and somebody seem to be applying the thought to action quite seriously.

The latest victim of hacking is Twitter. Thousands of accounts were broken into and spam messages were posted by these hackers promoting a drink made from acai berries.The act was triggered by an earlier security fall-out from Twitter. Gawker Media, a company that runs Gawker, Gizmodo and other technology and media sites were hacked into earlier. People who used the same passwords for Twitter at that time was the most vulnerable, the Daily Mail reported.

Thousands of messages were posted on twitter and is yet unclear on how many of the 175 million users were affected. But the damage has been done and within hours of the hack, tweets of acai flooded the space. Users termed the act "intensely annoying" as it jammed the twitter account with spam messages.

Attacks on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are on a surge as people unassumingly click on links sent by friends and family. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced plans to investigate the Gawker hacking.

Over 1.3 million passwords were stolen from Gawker and details published on a file-sharing site. The hackers, who calls itself 'Gnosis' apparently released the 500 MB file containing the data on file-sharing system Bittorrent so as to enable other hackers to access the information. A posting on gawker.com said: "We're deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems."

OneIndia News