IT Live: The co-founder and chief executive of Twitter had his own account on the service briefly taken over by hackers, reports BBC. A group referring to itself as the Chuckling Squad said it was behind the breach of Jack Dorsey's account.

The profile, which has more than four million followers, tweeted out a flurry of highly offensive and racist remarks for about 15 minutes. Twitter said its own systems were not compromised, instead blaming an unnamed mobile operator.

"The phone number associated with the account was compromised due to a security oversight by the mobile provider," Twitter said in a statement.

"This allowed an unauthorised person to compose and send tweets via text message from the phone number. That issue is now resolved."