The internet is abuzz after the hugely popular social media website Twitter was hacked.
The image Twitter uses were confronted with when they logged on
A group calling itself the "Iranian Cyber Army" broke through Twitter's defences and managed to divert traffic to its own servers.
There, Twitter users were faced with the group's own logos and images to the site, with a front page that read: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army."
"U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To..."
The ICA's origins are unknown but the online community reacted with shock to what is a major security breach.
"This is unacceptable for one of the world's top 20 most-visited websites," wrote Ben Parr, a blogger on Mashable.
"Nothing compares to what has happened tonight. Twitter was summarily hacked, taken over, and then taken down. Its security protocols were clearly ineffective."
A parody of the Twitter logo
He added, "This is a black eye of epic proportions."
Once the social networking site was back up, one topic dominated the conversation, as "#WhenTwitterWasDown" and "Iranian Cyber Army" quickly became the two most mentioned phrases on the network.
An official message from Twitter on Friday said: "Twitter's (Domain Name System) records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We will update with more information soon."
The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the internet service that ties a domain name to its web servers.
By changing these records, hackers would have been able to redirect visitors to Twitter.com to their own servers.
This could have enabled them to collect Twitter usernames and passwords by using a spoof website. But instead, they appear to have used the opportunity for political ends.
Twitter, whose celebrity fans include Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, is a site where users have 140 characters to write messages on the internet.
Last summer it was heralded as a tool that allowed opposition voices to be heard from Iran during a major crackdown following the disputed presidential election.
The image Twitter uses were confronted with when they logged onA group calling itself the "Iranian Cyber Army" broke through Twitter's defences and managed to divert traffic to its own servers.
There, Twitter users were faced with the group's own logos and images to the site, with a front page that read: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army."
"U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To..."
The ICA's origins are unknown but the online community reacted with shock to what is a major security breach.
"This is unacceptable for one of the world's top 20 most-visited websites," wrote Ben Parr, a blogger on Mashable.
"Nothing compares to what has happened tonight. Twitter was summarily hacked, taken over, and then taken down. Its security protocols were clearly ineffective."
A parody of the Twitter logoHe added, "This is a black eye of epic proportions."
Once the social networking site was back up, one topic dominated the conversation, as "#WhenTwitterWasDown" and "Iranian Cyber Army" quickly became the two most mentioned phrases on the network.
An official message from Twitter on Friday said: "Twitter's (Domain Name System) records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We will update with more information soon."
The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the internet service that ties a domain name to its web servers.
By changing these records, hackers would have been able to redirect visitors to Twitter.com to their own servers.
This could have enabled them to collect Twitter usernames and passwords by using a spoof website. But instead, they appear to have used the opportunity for political ends.
Twitter, whose celebrity fans include Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, is a site where users have 140 characters to write messages on the internet.
Last summer it was heralded as a tool that allowed opposition voices to be heard from Iran during a major crackdown following the disputed presidential election.
