An unknown attacker hacked into the Twitter account of 16-year old Miley Cyrus, the lead actress in acclaimed Disney TV series Hannah Montana. The Twitter staff were forced to temporarily suspend it after several offensive messages had been posted in the name of the teen celebrity.

Miley Cyrus is the daughter of country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus and plays the role of Miley Stewart, the main character in the Emmy Award nominee series Hannah Montana. The young actress is considered by many to be a role model for children.

This also made the subject of one of the discrediting messages posted by the hacker, which read: "I'm not a [censored] role modle [sic.]. I hate little kids. I only do Hannah Montanna [sic.] for da $$$$$$."

Other messages were obscene in nature and even attacked Hannah Montana guest star Selena Gomez in the name of Cyrus. The Twitter staff reacted promptly when being notified of the attack and temporarily suspended the compromised account. Users trying to access the actress' feed received a message that read: "Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity."

This is not the first time when hackers target Miley Cyrus. It is not even the second time, the celebrity previously having her YouTube, MySpace and Gmail accounts compromised. These attacks resulted in intimate and provocative pictures of the, then 15-year old, singer being leaked on the Internet and fake rumors about her death in a car accident being spread.

Impersonating celebrities is becoming a trend for hackers. We recently reported about Lil' Kim's Facebook account being hijacked. Kanye West has also been targeted by online phranksters several times. The rapper has begged them to stop after his MySpace and Gmail accounts were hacked and false rumors about him were spread from fake Twitter and Skype accounts set up in his name.

Some security researchers questioned Twitter's password policies after a hacker hijacked 33 high profile accounts on the micro-blogging platform, including those of Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Rick Sanchez, or Fox News, at the beginning of January. The person who took credit for the incident claimed to have used a brute-force dictionary attack on the account of a Twitter staffer, who used "happiness" as a password. Incidentally, the same attacker assumed responsibility for the hacking of the YouTube account of Miley Cyrus back in 2008.