Hackers seize PayPal UK Twitter account
BOSTON | Tue Jul 5, 2011 6:04pm EDT
(Reuters) - Hackers seized control of a PayPal Twitter feed for more than an hour on Tuesday, then sent out messages criticizing the payment processor in the second attack of its type in two days.
The hijacking of the PayPalUK Twitter feed came a day after hackers took control of a Fox News feed for more than five hours, then sent false tweets saying that U.S. President Barack Obama had been shot dead.
In PayPal's case, the attackers sent out messages promoting paypalsucks.com, a site devoted to what it says is "exposing the nightmare of doing business 'the PayPal way.'"
The Tweets were removed within a few hours of the hijacking. "Sorry, the profile you are trying to view has been suspended," Twitter said on its page for the PayPalUK feed.
A PayPal spokesman said via email that the attack on the Twitter account had not affected the company's operations or its internal computer networks. Officials with Twitter did not respond to emails seeking comment.
"PayPal UK is unaffected by this and has not been breached or affected," the PayPal spokesman said.
PayPal is a subsidiary of Ebay Inc, the e-commerce company.
The paypalsucks.com site said that it had nothing to do with the attack. "We never condone hacking of any kind," the site said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle and Alistair Barr, editing by Matthew Lewis)
Credit: Reuters (www.reuters.com)
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