Twitpic hackers tweet fake celeb deaths

By Dara Kerr on 30 June 2009, 11:52am

Celebrities seem to be dropping like flies. After the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon last week, a wave of viral death notices went out on Twitter for Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Goldblum and P Diddy. But all are safe and sound -- and it seems a bout of dastardly hacking was to blame.

"Britney has passed today," a bogus tweet announced on Sunday. "It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come."

The message was immediately taken down and Spears' staff tweeted that her account was hacked into and that, "She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing."

Similar messages were put up on the other celebrity's accounts, says Mashable. They believe hackers got access to these celebrities' Twitter accounts through Twitpic, a service that lets Twitter users share photos. To post to Twitpic, users can email a photo with a subject line, put in their password, and the post will be immediately tweeted.

According to the Associated Press, once discovered, the morbid tweets were taken down and Twitpic temporarily shutoff part of its service, announcing it was "implementing a fix immediately".

Twitpic fixed this vulnerability on Monday and in an apology letter explained that the hackers tried every PIN combination possible until one worked. Now, Twitpic says a "fix has been put in place to prevent this from happening", fewer than ten users were affected by the hack and "no account information was compromised".

This isn't the first time Spear's Twitter account has been toyed with. At the end of April, a hacker got access to a Twitter administrator password by guessing the secret question to reset the password and broke into Spears' and other celebrities' accounts.

Meanwhile, the celebrity death meme continues, with this morning's hottest trending topic being that post-ironic pop icon Rick Astley has died. Don't worry, he's fine.