Suspect Arrested In Obama Twitter Hack
The 25-year-old was arrested and released Tuesday but could face jail time if found guilty of breaking into the micro-blogging site Twitter by guessing users' passwords.
Twitter, which confirmed the hack in April 2009 in a blog post, said that 10 individual accounts were exposed during the hack but said that "initial security reviews and investigations indicated that no account information was altered or removed in any way."
The personal information that was exposed by the incident could have included victims' e-mail addresses, mobile phone numbers, and the list of accounts blocked by the user. Twitter said that it had contacted the individuals whose accounts were affected by the breach.
The suspect was questioned by policed, and is scheduled to appear in court in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand on June 24.
If convicted, the suspect could receive up to two years in jail for hacking into a data base.
However, the suspect, who allegedly conducted hacking activities under the pseudonym "Hacker Croll," "had no particular technological expertise," but instead gained access to Twitter accounts by figuring out the answers to password reminder questions, Reuters reported.
The suspect told Reuters that he accessed the information after breaking into the account of Twitter employee Jason Goldman, and correctly guessing the answer to Goldman's secret question on his Yahoo e-mail account. He then used the Yahoo account to find other passwords.