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May 26, 2012
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Frenchman Arrested for Hacking Obama’s Twitter Account

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Posted on Mar 24, 2010
Obama
White House / Samantha Appleton

Here’s yet another object lesson underscoring the need to pick really hard-to-guess passwords and online account information, courtesy of our nation’s president. Barack Obama’s Twitter account was hacked by a 25-year-old Frenchman who simply managed to figure out the answers to Obama’s password reminder prompts, according to the BBC.  —KA

BBC:

A Frenchman who police say hacked Twitter accounts belonging to US President Barack Obama and celebrities could face jail.

The unemployed 25-year-old was arrested on Tuesday after an operation lasting several months, conducted by French police with agents from the FBI.

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By Luca, March 26, 2010 at 3:43 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I hope that nobody seriously thinks that Obama actually
manages his own Twitter account.

If most half-baked celebs can hire PR folks to tweet on
their behalf (and that of any product they might be
asked to peddle) then I’m pretty certain the White
House has more than one professional Twit at hand.

Presumably THAT’s the genius who got hacked.

Report this

By Miko, March 24, 2010 at 5:59 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

PSmith: For someone reasonable competent with computers
and (depending on the exact circumstances) sufficiently
unethical, masking a geolocation isn’t especially
difficult.  e.g., Hulu users from outside the U.S. do
it all the time.

And it wasn’t Obama’s password that was guessed.  It
was the password security question, which is a lot
easier to solve for a well-known public figure.

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By stcfarms, March 24, 2010 at 5:25 pm Link to this comment

Yeah, pres might have been too easy, I will have to change mine from emc2…

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A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
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