May 13, 2011 17:23 GMT  ·  By

A group of hackers has managed to compromise several systems belonging to Fox Broadcasting Company and stole the passwords to its employees' email accounts.

The same attackers also took responsibility for recently stealing and leaking the personal information of 250,000 US residents who singed up for X Factor auditions.

Following the new attack, a open letter to the company was published by the hackers online, announcing that this is just the beginning. It reads:

"Dear Fox.com, We don't like you very much. As such, we cordially invite you to kiss our hand-crafted crescent fresh asses. Remember that time we leaked all your X-Factor contestants? [link to torrent]

Well now we're leaking some more of your junk. We invite the Internet to ravage the following list of emails and passwords (from a database within Fox.com) - Facebook, MySpace, PayPal, whatever you can get your hands on. Take from them everything. Remember to proxy up, or tunnel like a pro!

Follow us on twitter; we're owning more things next week. Kisses!

All the best, LulzSec"

The hacker group also managed to hijack the @FOXUPTV Twitter account and used it to advertise their own profile.

"Hello f***ers, sh**ty Fox TV here! Let's all get following @LulzSec right now to see our asses get torn a new one! #F**kFox #LulzSec," said a rogue tweet sent from the hijacked account.

In addition, some of the stolen email addresses and passwords were used to break into the social media accounts of Fox employees. For example, the LinkedIn page of Marian Lai, vice president of Fox Broadcasting, has been defaced, the hackers adding a new profile picture and "LulzSec" to his name.

"Clearly, it's important for Fox employees to change their passwords if they haven't already done so. But more than that, this hack's impact underlines the importance of using different passwords on every website that you access, and making sure that your passwords are not dictionary words or easy to crack or guess," writes Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.