PayPal UK joins long line of Twitter account hijacks

PayPal has become the latest big name organisation to have its Twitter account hijacked after its UK feed began displaying abusive and derogatory messages.

The hack of PayPal UK's account occurred on Tuesday evening, resulting in the firm's logo being replaced and the appearance of messages including: "PAYPAL FROZE ALL MY MONEY FOR NO REASON, F*** YOU!"

Sophos Canada senior security advisor Chester Wisniewski said that the site was temporarily shut down a couple of hours later after PayPal discovered what had happened.

Wisniewski speculated that the hack may have been the the result of poor password management.

"With the large numbers of usernames and passwords that have been recently disclosed, many people are looking for well-known organisations that may reuse passwords on multiple sites," he wrote in a blog post.

PayPal was quick to inform customers that no sensitive data had been compromised in the incident.

"PayPal would like to reassure all customers that PayPal's UK customer systems and data have not been breached or hacked in any way," the company said in a statement. "There is no link between customer systems and our Twitter account."

The incident is the latest in a long line of Twitter account hijacks which most recently saw the Fox News feed taken over and used to post messages claiming that US president Barack Obama had been assassinated.