By Asher Moses
US rapper Soulja Boy has been targeted by cyber vandals who defaced his MySpace profile and published his email and YouTube passwords on the internet.
The hackers, reportedly part of the popular online community 4chan, contacted Soulja Boy demanding he hand over $US2500 in order to regain control over his account.
The rapper, who published tracks on the internet before becoming a mainstream star in September last year with the number one hit Crank That (Soulja Boy), refused.
His MySpace page was then wiped out and replaced with obscenity-laden messages where Soulja Boy purportedly declared his homosexuality and told fans to "go f--- yourselves".
The miscreants also published the rapper's passwords - including to his email, souljaboytellem@mac.com - on the internet, and flooded his website's online chatroom.
The saga ended when Soulja Boy's record label, Interscope, contacted MySpace and demanded the account be returned.
His YouTube and email accounts have also been returned, Soulja Boy said in a recent YouTube video.
"Niggas sent me a message on MySpace saying I got your shit, send me $2500 if you want it back," he says in the video.
"I texted back saying f--- you, bitch, do what you do, the mother f---er got to be f---ed up. And then after that he deleted all my shit and I was like well darn the nigga wasn't bluffin."
Soulja Boy says in the video that he was going to offer a $US10,000 reward to anyone who revealed the hacker's identity but this was unnecessary as he had already caught them.
"On the next video y'all stay tuned to see what we did with this hacker - we gotta make an example out of this shit."
The video was published last week and since then Soulja Boy has published a number of other clips on YouTube, none of which mention the hacking saga.
The hack appears to be unrelated to a recent online feud with gangsta rap veteran Ice-T, who labelled Soulja Boy's music garbage that was killing hip-hop. The comments started a war on YouTube and Souljah Boy responded with a cartoon that mocked Ice-T and his dancing.
Celebrities' MySpace pages are regular targets for hackers looking to increase their notoriety or expose private photos and messages.
In 2007, a person wanting to impress a hacker group broke into the MySpace profiles of Justin Timberlake, Hilary Duff and MTV personality Tila Tequila. Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus Alicia Keys and Nas have also had their profiles compromised in the past.