Man arrested for attack on Twitter accounts

On Thursday, investigators in France arrested an unemployed 25-year old man who appears to have been responsible for the spectacular attacks on Twitter accounts that included those of US President Barack Obama and pop singer Britney Spears. The man, who goes by the pseudonym 'Hacker Croll', is accused of having illegally gained access to a number of user accounts on short messaging service Twitter, including the accounts belonging to Obama and Spears. According to initial reports, the computer geek was merely looking for a challenge. A spokesperson for the French police yesterday evening stated that, "He was not trying to make any money out of this."

Following questioning, the 25-year old was released on the same evening. He will appear in court in the summer. French investigators caught up with the man, who is from the Auvergne, with the help of information provided by the FBI. US officials were also present at the arrest and during questioning.

Microblogging service Twitter has suffered a number of security failures. In May, an attacker exploited a security vulnerability to steal internal documents. In August, attackers succeeded in knocking out all of the company's servers and at the end of last year, the website was attacked by a pro-Iranian group.

(dpa)

See also:

• Twitter to detect, intercept and prevent bad links, a report from The H.

(crve)