A cybercriminal managed to hack Twitter's platform, Tweetdeck, gain access to various accounts and re-tweet the altered code.
The code vulnerability affected several high-profile accounts, including BBC Breaking News and Ed Miliband.
The service was temporarily down, but Tweetdeck said it had fixed the bug and restored the web app.
Users were not asked to change passwords.
The hacker who carried out the attack, which was achieved through the exploitation of a “cross-site scripting” (XSS) vulnerability, retweeted messages from multiple fake addresses and sent cryptic notifications to some users.
Tweetdeck initially advised its users to log out and log back in, saying this would fix the problem.
However, the problem was not solved.
The company then wrote that it had taken the service offline until the issue was fully resolved.
Tweetdeck, a British company acquired by Twitter in 2011, allows users to aggregate different feeds.
