Twitter's Recent Security Problems - Phishing Scam & Hacking of high-profile Accounts

Being popular in Web 2.0 world comes with its own share of problems. Twitter, the most popular microblogging service, found this out when they faced security problems on two occasions recently. The first one was the phishing scam which tricked thousands of tweeters into giving away their account passwords to a phishing site which resembled the Twitter main site. Twitter blog called this the 'Gone Phishing' scam, which now appears to be under control. The second problem was when some high-profile accounts including that of Barack Obama, Britney Spears, etc were compromised and fake updates posted on their behalf. Twitter status has posted an update about this problem.~

Apparently the hacking was done by an 18-year-old student who gained access some of the tools used by Twitter's support team. A detailed account of the problem can be found in Twitter blog.