A French computer hacker was facing prison today after breaking into the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama and Britney Spears by ‘guessing’ their passwords.
In the U.S. president's case the key word is said to have included the name of his beloved dog, Bo.
The arrested 25-year-old, a Frenchman who lived with his parents and used the pseudonym ‘Hacker Croll’, was tracked down in a trans-Atlantic police operation coordinated by the FBI.
Agents spent six months on his trail after he managed to gain access to Mr Obama’s Twitter account - a micro-blogging site which the president frequently uses to communicate with voters.
The unemployed defendant - whose real name has not yet been released for legal reasons - was held in a police station in central France city of Clermont-Ferrand before being released on bail.
He will appear in court on June 24 when he faces up to two years in prison for hacking into a computer database.
The investigation is being conducted by French prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat.
‘He told us how he got into the accounts, but he’s not a genius,’ said a detective involved in the case. ‘He’d managed to get hold of administrator codes, enabling him to create, modify and delete accounts as he wanted.
‘The only really clever thing he did was to guess people’s passwords. He seemed to do this by studying their characters - watching them on TV, reading their blogs, and generally getting to know them. It was apparently a remarkably easy thing to do, especially in the case of international celebrities like Obama and Britney.
‘Obama is fond of the word Bo, the name of his dog, and used it in a number of passwords.’
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Frenchman Hacks Obama's Twitter Account
It apparently wasn't too difficult since our genius leader used his dog's name as part of his password. Of course the dog's name also matches Obama's initials. I doubt it's actually Obama doing the tweeting, but then again when you have such sage tweets like this, it probably is. No word whether the French dude was a racist birther and tea party member, but I'm sure the left will find a connection.
Labels:
Barack Obama,
Britney Spears,
Twitter
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