Hackers hijacked the Twitter accounts of more than 30 celebrities and organizations, including President-elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears and Fox News, early on Monday, the company confirmed today.

The hacker posted a fictional update to the Twitter feed for CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez which read: 'I am high on crack right now, might not be coming into work today.'
A similar post was made to the Fox News blog claiming that anchorman Bill O'Reilly was gay, while the Spears feed sported a vulgar message claiming to be from the pop singer. Obama's feed included a link to a survey site which pays users for traffic referrals.

"These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck," the company explained.

As a result of the attack, Twitter has taken down the compromised support tools until a fix can made to prevent future attacks.
Users are still being advised to steer clear of unsolicited messages, and ignore any outside site that asks for Twitter log-in details.