Jul 6, 2011 07:49 GMT  ·  By

A hacker managed to hijack PayPal UK's Twitter account and used it to mock the company, as well as post fake customer announcements.

The attacker had access to the account for a couple of hours before PayPal was alerted about the breach and regained control over it.

During this time the profile picture was changed several times. One depicted the PayPal logo under a blocked sign.

"PAYPAL CAN FREEZE YOUR FUNDS FOR NO REASON, DO NOT USE PAYPAL!!" the hacker wrote. This suggests that he might have a personal beef with the payment services provider.

He also mocked the company's security by writing "OUR SECURITY IS SO GREAT, LOOK AT OUR TWITTER FEED AND SEE!!!"

Later he decided to spread panic among the 17,000 people who follow @PayPalUK and announced that all accounts have been frozen.

"All your paypal accounts are now frozen while we clean up this mess," the fake announcement read. This lead to some users believing their accounts had been compromised.

In addition to the fake announcement, the hacker also directed users to a website filed with stories from people who encountered problems while using the service.

"PayPal UK's Twitter feed was targeted by hackers tonight. PayPal would like to reassure all customers that PayPal’s UK customer systems and data have not been breached or hacked in any way. There is no link between customer systems and our Twitter account," a PayPal UK spokesperson told Naked Security.

The incident comes after earlier this week, the Twitter account of Fox News Politics was hijacked by individuals who falsely announced that President Obama had been assassinated. The U.S. Secret Service was notified and launched an investigation into the incident.

The method used to compromise the PayPal UK Twitter account is not known, but in Fox News' case, the attack vector was located offsite.