frenchie who called himself Hacker Croll was the guy who got obama lulz
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl....html?ITO=1490
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.
Hacked: The French man managed to break into U.S. president Barack Obama's Twitter account
Britney Spears
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.’
The detective said that passwords often amounted to nothing more than a mother’s maiden name, or the name of a family pet.
In July Hacker Croll sent a file containing 310 confidential corporate and personal documents to an American technology site called TechCrunch. They included executive meeting notes, financial projections and even diaries.
Hacker Croll then started ‘attacking’ the Twitter accounts of several U.S. celebrities, posting false information aimed at embarrassing them.
He is not thought to have profited financially from the Twitter hacking, but he was known to French police for other minor technological scams that had netted around £14,000.
The FBI alerted the French authorities to what Hacker Croll was doing in July. Four FBI agents worked with French police for several months to track him down.
Twitter users create some 50million messages per day, with many sent by high profile celebrities.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl....html?ITO=1490
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.
Hacked: The French man managed to break into U.S. president Barack Obama's Twitter account
Britney Spears
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.’
The detective said that passwords often amounted to nothing more than a mother’s maiden name, or the name of a family pet.
In July Hacker Croll sent a file containing 310 confidential corporate and personal documents to an American technology site called TechCrunch. They included executive meeting notes, financial projections and even diaries.
Hacker Croll then started ‘attacking’ the Twitter accounts of several U.S. celebrities, posting false information aimed at embarrassing them.
He is not thought to have profited financially from the Twitter hacking, but he was known to French police for other minor technological scams that had netted around £14,000.
The FBI alerted the French authorities to what Hacker Croll was doing in July. Four FBI agents worked with French police for several months to track him down.
Twitter users create some 50million messages per day, with many sent by high profile celebrities.
