Thousands of Twitter accounts have been hacked to promote Acai Berry diet supplement Insecurity outfit Sophos is warning that thousands of Twitter users are seeing unexpected messages from hacked online friends promoting a weight loss supplement.

The message links to what pretends to be a news website, but it is really designed to promote an Acai Berry "miracle diet", marketed as "Power Slim", which claims to help subscribers "get the beach body you've always wanted". Typical messages being circulated on Twitter contain the following text:

"Get the beach body you've always wanted, now you can with this weight loss supplement"

The fake news site, News 3, claims that the Acai Berry weight loss fad has been featured in Women's Health, Elle, Marie Claire, Oprah, Cosmopolitan and many other magazines.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos said that if this diet aid is really such a miraculous product and it's getting this much media attention, it seems odd that it has to be promoted through spam via compromised Twitter accounts. It is unclear how the Twitter accounts have been hacked, but it is possible that users' passwords have been compromised. He is suggesting that people change their passwords and change any other online accounts where the same password is being used.

“Having the same password for multiple websites increases the chances of being hacked - if you don't learn that lesson now you're going to end up in trouble sooner or later," Cluely said,