Twitter hackers flip red-faced Burger King into McDonald's

Fast food giant Burger King became the latest company to find its Twitter account hacked by pranksters who posted obscene messages and changed its profile picture to one of McDonald's.

The hackers changed the icon to McDonald's logo, the account picture to the rival's new Fish McBites and tweeted: "We just got sold to McDonald's!"

About 55 tweets and retweets followed over the next hour, including some that contained racial epithets, drug references and obscenities. The account tweeted: "if I catch you at a wendys, we're fightin!" Burger King said it had reached out to Twitter to suspend the account. The burger chain, which usually tweets several times a week, said it was working to get the account back up.

Yesterday's breach is the latest in a series of embarrassing security hiccups for the social media site. Pay Pal, Fox News and celebrities including Ashton Kutcher have also had their accounts hacked.

Earlier this month, Twitter said that the passwords of 250,000 users had been stolen, prompting the social media company to announce plans for a more effective "two-factor authentication" system.