President elect Barack Obama used the internet as a cornerstone of his campaign. With a tremendously successful presence on Twitter, he proved that it is possible to harness the internet to make a powerful case for change. While the account has been disappointingly dormant since November 5, it recently received an update indicative of a compromised account.

While the original message has since been deleted, the original still stands on Twitter’s search engine, Summize:

HO TEH NOEZ! Hacker terrorists got @BarackObama!

The update was deleted almost as quickly as it was posted; shortly thereafter, Obama’s Twitter page was replaced with a technical error notice displayed after the jump.

When Twitterific progress goes *boink!*

@BarackObama is now alive and healthy, but for a brief moment in time, the Twitterverse was atwitter with news of the account’s issues. A few samples below:

@Joem32 puts out the call of "WTF?"

@bnbarry34 also takes notice of foul play.

Proof that everyone, everyone is susceptible to phishing schemes and compromised accounts. This is another lesson in the need for care and caution with passwords and links on the internet.

UPDATED:

The official Twitter blog is reporting that Twitter services were compromised. The update states that a hacker was able to wrest control of some of the tools the Twitter team uses to manage user account information. Whoops!

The issue with these 33 accounts is different from the Phishing scam aimed at Twitter users this weekend. 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. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We’ll put them back only when they’re safe and secure.

And that appears to be the last of the tale for now.