Six years ago, the Dutch hacker, Victor Gevers,
twice broke into the official Twitter account of President Donald Trump.
On the first occasion, he correctly guessed the password:
“yourefired”
(you are fired, in Spanish), a reference to his famous phrase with which he dismissed the contestants of the television show
El Aprendiz.
In October of this year, Gevers repeated the act.
On his fifth attempt, he re-entered the president's account
after guessing his new password: “maga2020!”.
The security specialist sent several screenshots to the De Volkskrant newspaper to prove that he managed to
publish tweets on behalf of the president
, change his personal information and see his direct messages.
The account did
n't even have basic security controls
like two-step verification.
“I was expecting to be blocked after four failed attempts.
Or at least ask for additional information, ”Gevers told the newspaper.
The Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are hacked
July 15, 202000: 28
The Dutchman also
informed the
United States
Government about President Trump's digital security vulnerability.
He contacted his campaign team, and even tagged the CIA, the FBI and the White House on Twitter.
According to the Dutch newspaper, Gevers was contacted by the Secret Service, which thanked him for his attempts to improve the security of the president's Twitter account.
The
hacking
is a crime in the Netherlands, but authorities reported
no press
charges against Gevers because he made a "responsible disclosure"
of the fact.
Instead of taking advantage of his control over the president's account,
the hacker acted ethically and warned about how easy it was to abuse
that security weakness.
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"We believe that the hacker has penetrated Trump's Twitter account, but has met the criteria that have been developed in case law to go free as an
ethical hacker
," the prosecutor's office said, according to The Washington Post.
"The hacker disclosed [to the authorities] the username and password information himself. He later told the police that he had investigated the password security because there were large interests involved if this Twitter account was hijacked so close to the presidential elections. "prosecutors said.
In an interview with BBC News, the Dutchman said he was pleased with the decision of the prosecution, since the matter not only benefited him, but "all volunteers who look for vulnerabilities on the internet."
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In a statement made in October, White House deputy press secretary Judson Deere denied the hack.
Twitter also said in a statement that it did not have enough evidence to corroborate it.
It's not just the social media accounts of high-profile figures like President Trump that are vulnerable to hacking.
The Norton company
recommends that all users of social networks have different passwords for each social network, and avoid using personal information to create passwords.
With information from De Volkskrant, The Washington Post, BBC News.
