CYBERSPACE, 2009 (D.O.T.) -- A brazen hacker going by the name of 'Hacker Croll' has recently gained access to nearly a dozen accounts including that of an administrator and celebrities at the micro-blogging service Twitter, while an earlier attack violated hundreds of accounts.

Posting on a French online discussion forum, 'Hacker Croll' claimed to have hacked into the account of Jason Goldman, one of Twitter's directors of product management. To back up the claims, he or she posted 13 screenshots of Twitter's account management interface.

The screenshots suggest that the hacker was able to access the accounts of several Twitter celebrity users.

The accounts include those of singer-entertainer, Britney Spears, as well as actor Ashton Kutcher, husband of actress Demi Moore who also has a Twitter account.

Regarding the Hack-Attack, the 2nd in recent time, Twitter issued the following statement in its blog:
"Unauthorized access to Twitter was gained by an outside party. Our initial security reviews and investigations indicate that no account information was altered or removed in any way. However, we did discover that 10 individual personal accounts were viewed during this unauthorized access.

"Personal information that may have been viewed on these 10 individual accounts includes email address, mobile phone numbers (if one was associated with the account), and the list of accounts blocked by that user. We have personally contacted Twitter users whose accounts were compromised via this unauthorized access."

The company added that no password information appears to have been changed, and no personal messages viewed.

However, this is the second time in the past few months that Twitter has been hacked. It seems that 'Hacker Croll' used the same method as the earlier hacker, whether it is the same individual or not remains to be seen. Nonetheless, he or she simply correctly guessed a password based on minimal information about the selected target.

In the earlier attack, Twitter admitted that 750 accounts had been broken into and had a link to a webcam site posted on each of the violated accounts.

At the time, Twitter issued this advice to its users:

"Keep in mind that strong passwords can help to prevent hijacked accounts. Twitter offers a password strength indicator to help you choose a strong password when you sign up."

Perhaps now, Twitter should re-issue the same memo to its executives.

CyberSpacers Headquarters

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