French police have released a hacker who gained access to US President Barack Obama's account in one of his attacks on the wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter, police said Wednesday.
The unemployed 25-year-old, who lived with his parents and used the pseudonym "Hacker Croll", was arrested Tuesday after an operation conducted jointly with US agents from the FBI that lasted several months.
He was questioned in police custody in the central city of Clermont-Ferrand and has been ordered to appear in court in the same city on June 24.
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The hacker had no particular technological expertise, said police, but simply guessed people's passwords by working them out from information on their blogs or online pages they had created about themselves, police said.
He would also do this by answering the "secret question" on web-based email accounts -- which people often answer by giving their maiden name or the name of their pet -- and then use this to gain access to Twitter passwords.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ih6sNjp-rSolFFTgPrdvxSZuUPRASometimes I despair at the level of 'security' people use, in conjunction with how much they tell the world about themselves.
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