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hacker

French Hacker “Hacker Croll” compromised Twitter

by Mahesh Kukreja on May 4, 2009

A French computer hacker is thought to have tapped into Twitter’s internal system, gaining access to millions of accounts including that of US President Barack Obama.

The hacker, under the name “Hacker Croll“, posted a series of screenshots showing him viewing internal website settings and the private details of user accounts.

The screenshots show Croll looking at the behind-the-scenes details for the account of US President Barack Obama, including the IP address of the last person to use it.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed unauthorised access was gained by an outside party during the week, but said only 10 individual accounts were viewed.

Mr Stone did not reveal whose Twitter accounts had been hacked, but he assured Twitter users no account information was altered or removed.

All affected parties had been contacted and Twitter was conducting a independent security audit of its internal systems, he said.

According to a report on PC World, Croll gained access to the system by finding the password of a Twitter employee.

He allegedly boasted on an online forum of breaking into the Yahoo! email account of an employee and then finding the employee’s Twitter password in an old email.

It is the second time Twitter has suffered a security breach this year.

In January another hacker gained access to a staff account by guessing the password.

The hacker then posted fake updates to a number of high-profile accounts including Britney Spears and Mr Obama.

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Teen hacker turns into corporate cyber-crime consultant

by Mahesh Kukreja on March 25, 2009

A New Zealand teenager who helped a crime gang hack into more than 1 million computers worldwide and skim millions of dollars from bank accounts has a new job as a security consultant for a telecom company.

Owen Thor Walker has the skills that can help senior executives and customers understand the security threats to their computer networks, TelstraClear spokesman Chris Mirams told National Radio on Wednesday.

Walker pleaded guilty last July — when he was 18 — to a raft of charges connected to his work for an international network that the FBI estimated infiltrated 1.3 million computers and skimmed bank accounts or damaged computer systems to the tune of more than $20 million.

The charges against Walker — who used the online name “AKILL” and wrote so-called botnet infiltration programs for the crime network — were dismissed and he was released without a criminal record after paying a fine and forfeiting cash paid by the criminal group for his expertise.

Walker already has delivered a series of seminars for TelstraClear, advised senior security and management staff at the company and has taken part in an advertising campaign, Mirams said.

“It was really just … to let them know the type of cyber threats that are out there,” Mirams said, adding that Walker also discussed how to defend against those threats.

Some hackers send mass e-mails to a target corporate or government computer system to overload it and crash the system. Others assume control of thousands of computers and amass them in centrally controlled clusters known as botnets.

The hackers can then use the computers to steal credit card information, manipulate stock trades and crash industry computer systems.

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