The off-message tweets happened between 3:39 a.m. and 4:02 a.m. EST on May 3.

Demonstrations broke out all over New York City Monday for what was billed as a day of resurgence for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The May 1 protests were months in the planning and drew 15,000 people at one point to Union Square, according to Mother Jones. As in the fall, the protesters used Twitter to communicate. The official Twitter account of occupywallst.org, @OccupyWallSt, has 159,281 followers. It usually tweets about assemblies and the revolution, but anyone who was logged on early this morning got treated to a few off-color remarks.

“Millions shocked at how bad their credit scores are. See it Instantly @http://bit.ly/K3uzg8,” the account tweeted early this morning. “A Good Credit Score is 693 & Above See Your Credit Instantly Now !!Check at http://bit.ly/K3uzg8.”

One follower recognized this particular spam from a virus spreading on Facebook and warned the rebels they’d had a breach. But judging by the number of retweets and favorites, not all the freedom fighters were hip to the scam. When the account announced at 4:06 a.m. that it had been hacked and was “working on shutting it down,” a few followers breathed relief.

“Yeah, I was wondering why you’d be tweeting about credit reports,” tweeted one Erik Smith.

@OccupyWallSt @Profinity Im not shocked nor curious bout my credit score. When its all good again I will be able 2 tell by offers 2 buy shit

— KellyAnnPritchard (@KellyAPritchard) May 3, 2012

UPDATE: Columbia student Peter Sterne pointed out via Twitter that the New York Republican State Committee was infiltrated by acai berry spammers around the same time:

@jakebeckman Here’s a screenshot, for when @NewYorkGOP deletes the tweet. twitter.com/petersterne/st…

— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) May 3, 2012

Adrianne Jeffries is the editor of Betabeat. Follow Adrianne on Twitter or via RSS. ajeffries@observer.com