Security experts have warned that TwitPic, a site used by Twitter members to share images, can be used to hijack the micro-blogging service.
Hackers managed to hack the TwitPic account of the official Britney Spears Twitter feed and post messages claiming the star was dead.
"Britney has passed today. It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come," said one of the tweets.
Hackers managed to post the message, which has now been deleted, on Spears' Twitter feed by hijacking the TwitPic photo-sharing website.
According to Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos, hackers probably managed to crack a four-digit PIN code used to protect the TwitPic email addresses which members can simply send an email to in order to post a message, or tweet, on Twitter.
"This kind of vulnerability goes to show how simple it can be for hackers to break into accounts, which could then be used to expose followers to malicious web links containing malware or phishing pages," said Cluley.
"Although users should continue to be very careful when clicking on links in tweets, especially ones that have been obfuscated by link shortening services, this attack has demonstrated that services like TwitPic need to be doing more to protect their users," he continued.
The fake news reports come just days after the death of Michael Jackson was announced.
Women more likely than men to hit nail on the head
A new study finds that women are more accurate at pounding nails. Women hit the nail on the head more often in lighted conditions in a lab, but in
the dark, men did better. Scientists aren’t sure why, but they have a provocative idea. In hammering out the differences between the sexes, the researchers used a mechanical plate that measured force and accuracy.
They put small and large targets on the plate, to represent small and large nail heads. Then some test subjects pounded away. “We filmed how subjects hammered, and how close the subject hammered to the target was an index of accuracy,” explained study leader Duncan Irschick at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
“On average, men were about 25% more accurate than women in the dark, women were about 10% more accurate then men in the light,” Irschick said. Irschick told LiveScience the difference could be that men and women have different hammering strategies: Perhaps men favor force over accuracy, and women the opposite, he said. “However, if this were true, men should always be less accurate than women, which is not what occurs.”
the dark, men did better. Scientists aren’t sure why, but they have a provocative idea. In hammering out the differences between the sexes, the researchers used a mechanical plate that measured force and accuracy.
They put small and large targets on the plate, to represent small and large nail heads. Then some test subjects pounded away. “We filmed how subjects hammered, and how close the subject hammered to the target was an index of accuracy,” explained study leader Duncan Irschick at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
“On average, men were about 25% more accurate than women in the dark, women were about 10% more accurate then men in the light,” Irschick said. Irschick told LiveScience the difference could be that men and women have different hammering strategies: Perhaps men favor force over accuracy, and women the opposite, he said. “However, if this were true, men should always be less accurate than women, which is not what occurs.”
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