All News

Celebrities Twitter accounts hacked

March 26, 2010

The Twitter accounts of celebrities including Britney Spears, Lily Allen and even President Barack Obama have been hacked into by an unnamed jobless Frenchman.

The hacker whose username is "Hacker Croll" was arrested earlier this week in Clermont-Ferrand, France, after admitting to the crimes.

The 24-year-old, who was released on bail after being questioned by French police - with the FBI listening in - will stand trial in June.

If convicted he faces up to two years in prison and a £30,000 fine.

Prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat said: "He says it's the challenge, the game, that made him do it."

His technique was to get administrators' email passwords reset by correctly answering their security questions using information about his prey that he gathered from blogs and other public sites.

Twitter said in July that it was the victim of a security breach. Co-founder Biz Stone said then that the personal email of an unnamed Twitter administrative employee was hacked, and through that the attacker got access to the employee's Google Apps account.

Copyright © Press Association 2010

Latest News