GoDaddy owns up to role in epic Twitter account hijacking

GoDaddy has acknowledged that one of its employees fell victim to a social engineering attack allowing a hacker to take over a customer’s domain names and eventually extort a coveted Twitter user name from him. PayPal, which the victim claimed also played a role in the attack, denied the accusations.

Naoki Hiroshima, a software engineer and creator of the Cocoyon location sharing mobile app, reported Wednesday in a blog post that a hacker successfully extorted him into giving up his single-letter Twitter user name, called @N, after first hijacking his domain names registered at GoDaddy, email address and Facebook account.

Hiroshima claims he had received offers in the past from people willing to buy his @N Twitter handle for as much as $50,000. He also said he regularly receives password reset emails from Twitter, suggesting that the account is a constant target for hackers.