I'm a 'Kind Pirate,' Says Obama Twitter Hacker

Frenchman: I wanted to show system's vulnerabilities
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 25, 2010 4:56 PM CDT
I'm a 'Kind Pirate,' Says Obama Twitter Hacker
Francois Cousteix, the 23-year-old who broke into Obama's Twitter account, among others.

The man who cracked Barack Obama's Twitter account says he was merely trying to point out security weaknesses in the system. Francois Cousteix, an unemployed 23-year-old from France, describes himself as a "kind pirate" who used low-tech methods of guessing passwords, often aided by info on the Facebook pages of Twitter employees. "I am not a hacker," he tells AFP. "I did not act with a destructive aim."

Cousteix says he attacked Twitter and high-profile users like Obama and Britney Spears to show "that big companies are no more secure than any Internet user. That's the message I wanted to get across." Known as "Hacker Croll" online, he is scheduled to go on trial in June and faces 2 years in prison on hacking charges, notes AP.
(More Twitter stories.)

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