Hackers have hijacked the Twitter accounts of more than 30 celebrities and organisations, including president-elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears and Fox News.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in his company blog that 33 Twitter accounts had been hacked, including prominent Twitterers like Rick Sanchez, Barack Obama, and Britney Spears.

The accounts have been locked down until the hack could be controlled. Rick, Barack and others are now back in control of their accounts.

The hackers basically appeared to be having fun at the celebs' expense. CNN correspondent Rick Sanchez's account, for example, tweeted a message claiming that he was high on crack right now, and might not be coming to work today. Fox News' Twitter update reported that the stations right wing talk show host Bill O'Riley was gay. The Britney post was too obscene to be printed.

Twitter said that the accounts were hijacked using the company's own internal support tools. "The hacker used the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the e-mail address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck," said the company.

It was such a breach of security that the site took its support tools offline and they will only be coming back when they are "safe and secure," a spokestwitter said. X

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