Ashton Kutcher Punk'd via Twitter at TED

Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account (@aplusk) was apparently hacked yesterday while Mr. Punk'd himself was attending the TED conference yesterday in Long Beach.

It seemed like it was just yesterday that Kutcher and Larry King were going head-to-head -- in a publicity stunt raising money for charity -- to see who could be the first to 1 million Twitter followers. That was April 2009. Today it takes less than 24 hours to reach one million -- if you're Charlie Sheen -- and apparently only the charity of Charlie Sheen's #tigerblood benefits in this case.

Kutcher's account has gone silent since someone hijacked his account around 4 p.m. Wednesday to broadcast the following sage tweets to @aplusk's 6-million-plus followers:

• Ashton, you've been Punk'd. This account is not secure. Dude, where's my SSL?
• P.S. This is for those young protesters around the world who deserve not to have their Facebook & Twitter accounts hacked like this. #SSL

SSL stands for Security Sockets Layer. Kutcher was likely on an open WiFi signal at the TED conference that was protected only by antiquated SSL. Any old Joe using the same connection could have used exploited a known flaw in SSL to gain control of Kutcher's HTTP session and send the tweets.

For the record, we're still not sure what Sheen's #tigerblood hashtag really means although his unprecedented feat of garnering 1 million Twitter followers in a day has already been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Are you on Twitter? Follow us!