François Cousteix, better known as Hacker Croll, is a French self-taught cracker who is notable for hacking

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

in July 2009. He was in close contact with reporters from

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

who published numerous articles about the information obtained and the incident itself. He remained anonymous until his arrest in March 2010.

Attack on Twitter

Croll obtained access to many of Twitter's high-profile executives' numerous Internet accounts. The infiltration was made easy when the targets passwords and usernames were the same for both personal and business accounts. This led to a domino effect whereby all accounts were hacked including their

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and iTunes accounts. He obtained over 300 pages of sensitive documents including Twitters financial projections and meeting notes.

TechCrunch reports

TechCrunch first reported the hack which included a screenshot of Twitter founder Evan Williams'

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

page and speculation as to the true extent of the attack on July 16. It includes a statement by Williams saying "This had nothing to do with the security of twitter.com". Croll, apparently concerned that Twitter had not understood the danger of the attack sent all the documents obtained to TechCrunch, which subsequently published a select section of them. An extensive article describing the details of the attack a few days later after TechCrunch interviewed the Croll.

Letter to Twitter

When asked by TechCrunch if there was a message that he would like to send to Twitter he responded with a note where he encouraged them to be more careful about security. In English:

Arrest

He was arrested in March 2010 after a joint investigation by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

and French police. He was then handed a five-month suspended sentence by the criminal court in

Clermont-Ferrand Clermont-Ferrand (, ; ; oc, label=Auvergnat, Clarmont-Ferrand or Clharmou ; la, Augustonemetum) is a city and commune of France, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, with a population of 146,734 (2018). Its metropolitan area (''aire d'attract ...

, instead of the two months and €1,000 fine recommended by prosecutors; Croll announced that he would not appeal the sentence.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Croll, Hacker Living people Hacking (computer security) Year of birth missing (living people)