According to Mikko Hyponnen, chief research officer with F-Secure, more than 1000 accounts on the Twitter microblogging social networking service were hacked within the space of 12 hours, each of them broadcasting the message: "Hacked by Turkish Hackers."
In a security blog posting made last night, Hyponnen said that, although the exploit mechanism is unclear, most of the compromised accounts "seem to seem to belong to Israeli Twitter users."
Infosecurity notes that the Twitter hacking methodology appears to be the same as a rash of Facebook attacks identified by fellow IT security vendor AVG around two weeks ago when its research team revealed that a rash of "political hacktivism" was appearing.
According to AVG Australia, over the weekend of June 5/6, its researchers noticed that a number of Facebook accounts "had seemingly been hacked by Turkish hackers in retaliation for the recent Gaza blockade incident."
Reporting on that rash of hacker attacks, the Voxy newswire said that there may be two individuals or groups involved, and it they appear to be Turkish hackers.
Voxy quoted Roger Thompson, AVG's chief research officer, as saying that the number of hacked Facebook accounts was around 50, which would suggest it was not an automated attack.
"This is the first time, as far as I am aware, that Facebook has been a victim of political hacktivism", he told the New Zealand newswire.
Thompson added: "Given that the attack seems to be being run by Turkish hackers, and that Turkish hackers had once claimed a world record for defacing 37 000 pages in a single day, we should not discount the thought that they might find an automated way to move, and we should be extra vigilant with what we click."