Hackers have taken over the Twitter account of five-time Grammy Award winner Mariah Carey and used it to send sexually suggestive messages referencing rapper Eminem.
Singing superstar Carey is used to being in the public eye, especially over the festive period when her massive hit "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is played the world over. However, on New Year's Eve the phenomenally successful singer and actress hit the headlines for an entirely different reason.
According to CNN, as the curtain fell on 2019, hackers broke into Carey's account and posted several offensive, racist, and downright lewd tweets. One tweet, reported by The Source, is said to have read: "Eminem can still hold this p***y."
Another tweet posted by the hackers, which bizarrely received 5,463 "likes" and was retweeted 4,014 times, read "Merry Christmas You Dumb Ass N****s!"
In further tweets making references to Eminem, the hackers wrote about the rapper's daughter and posted the comment "Eminem has a little p***s."
It is unclear whether the remarks were an embarrassingly weak attempt at humor or a tribute to Eminem's track "The Kids," in which the rapper describes the most private part of his anatomy as being the size of a peanut.
The hack occurred over several hours on Tuesday afternoon, with the last tweet posted by the infantile miscreants hitting social media at 3:35 p.m.
Carey has 21.4 million followers on Twitter. The singer took the hack in good humor, responding to the incident with a tweet of her own. At 9:51 p.m. on December 31, the vocalist quipped: "I take a freaking nap and this happens?"
It's believed that Carey was targeted by the notorious Chuckling Squad hacking group, which famously compromised the Twitter account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in August after obtaining his cell phone number.
The group has also claimed responsibility for hacking other celebrity accounts, including that of actress Chloë Grace Moretz.
A Twitter spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter: "As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised account and are currently investigating the situation."