Web Security News

Big name Twitter accounts hacked

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

A computer hacker in France called Hacker Croll accessed control to Twitter's internal systems, gaining access to millions of accounts including President Barack Obama's.

A major IT security firm said Tuesday that the hacker gained access Twitter's internal administration system after stealing a password from a staffer at the Twitter.com micro-blogging website.

The hacker put a number of screenshots on the internet which depicted him gaining access to the accounts and showed the secret details of President Obama's Twitter account, including the IP address of the person to last update the account.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that no information was altered or removed and that the details of only 10 accounts were viewed. He said that the site has hired an independent network security auditor.

A similar incident occurred in January where a hacker guessed the password to a staff account and used it to hack other accounts through the Twitter site.

The network security firm that spotted the hack said internal security could be improved if staff used a randomly generated key upon login, so that if a staffer's username and password is compromised, hackers would not able to gain access.ADNFCR-1765-ID-19156018-ADNFCR

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