Hacking attacks made headlines this week, with YouTube and even the CEO of Citigroup not immune. We cover both of those stories in this article, and show you one way to keep yourself safe on Twitter.

But first things first. Vikram Pandit, chief executive officer of Citigroup, became a target of CabinCr3w, a hacking group affiliated with Anonymous. The latter group has been supportive of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been taking place for the past month. CabinCr3w posted some of Pandit's personal, sensitive information, including phone numbers, address, e-mail address, family information, and even legal and financial information.

CabinCr3w said they launched the attack and made the post in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street protesters who “had made [their] way to CitiBank to withdraw their funds and close their accounts.” Many of these protesters were arrested – about two dozen, according to the Wall Street Journal. While CabinCr3w would lead you to believe this was a peaceful gathering, CitiBank tells a different story. According to the bank's statement, these protesters “were very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked, causing our staff to call 911...Only one person asked to close an account and was accommodated.” You can read more details here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20121500-83/citigroup-ceo-targeted-by-hackers-over-protest-arrests/.

This next story will really scare those of you with young children who like YouTube. Someone hacked Sesame Street's YouTube Channel on Sunday, replacing its kid-friendly content with pornography. Thankfully, YouTube removed the objectionable content in 22 minutes. While the channel was unavailable for a while after the hack attack, it is now up and running normally.

While not commenting on the hack attack, a YouTube spokesperson noted that “YouTube's Community Guidelines prohibit graphic content...As always, we remove inappropriate material as soon as we are made aware of it.” The hack attack included a change to Sesame Street's YouTube channel's profile page in which “MREDXWX” and “MRSUICDER91” took credit for the attack. A YouTube user named MrEdxwx, however, posted a video denying responsibility for the attack. More details can be found here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20121144-83/hackers-add-porn-to-sesame-street-youtube-channel/.

Finally, there's a free service available for Twitter that will tell you whether any of the people you follow are engaging in suspicious behavior. While it won't do anything without your consent, you can set it up to alert you to any new issues. It's called Safego, and made by BitDefender. Activating it requires only that you log in with your Twitter account, so you don't need to set up a new account.

Right up front, the application tells you what it will and won't be able to do – and one of the things it won't be able to do is read your password. In just a few steps, Safego scans all of your friends' messages (which could take a while if you follow a lot of people) and flags anything suspicious. Once it's done, you can easily choose to unfollow or clear anyone from the list of suspicious users with which Safego presents you. For more detailed information, you can look up a step-by-step summary of the process here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20120042-83/scan-for-possible-spammers-on-your-twitter-account/.

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

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