French hacker breaks into Twitter, takes screenshots to back claims

For the second time this year, a hacker has gained administrative access to a Twitter employee's account.

On Wednesday, an anonymous hacker going by the name of Hacker Croll posted 13 screenshots to a French online discussion forum, apparently captured while logged into the Twitter account of Jason Goldman, a director of product management with Twitter.

Twitter CEO Biz Stone confirmed the breach in a blog post on Thursday afternoon. "This week, unauthorised access to Twitter was gained by an outside party," he wrote. "Our initial security reviews and investigations indicate that no account information was altered or removed in any way. However, we discovered that 10 individual accounts were viewed during this unauthorised access."

According to the screenshots, Hacker Croll was able to access account information belonging to high-profile Twitter users such as Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher. He could also do things such as add or remove featured users, who are suggested to new Twitter members when they sign up.

The hacker may have been able to access information such as email addresses, mobile-phone numbers and a list of the accounts blocked by these users, Stone wrote. "We have personally contacted Twitter users whose accounts were compromised via this unauthorized access," he said.

Hacker Croll claimed to have accessed Goldman's Twitter password by first gaining access to his Yahoo account. "One of the admins has a yahoo account, i've reset the password by answering to the secret question. Then, in the mailbox, i have found her [sic] twitter password," Hacker Croll said Wednesday in a posting to an online discussion forum. "I've used social engineering only, no exploit, no xss vulnerability, no backdoor, np sql injection."

On Monday, Goldman sent a Twitter message saying that his Yahoo mail account had been hacked.

Twitter has had a rash of security problems this year.

In January, another hacker going by the name of GMZ said he was able to gain access to an administrative account by guessing the password of a Twitter support staffer, according to a Wired report. The password was reportedly an easy-to-guess word: happiness.

GMZ then used that access to take control of 33 high-profile accounts, including those for Spears, US President Barack Obama and Fox News.

NEXT: Twitter hit with several fast-spreading worm attacks

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