“He ... stated to police that he had investigated the strength of the password because there were major interests involved if this Twitter account could be taken over so shortly before the presidential election,” Dutch authorities told the BBC on Wednesday. “The Public Prosecution Service believes the hacker has actually 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 service said in a statement Wednesday. Gevers said in October that he guessed Trump’s password on his fifth attempt. Gevers told De Volkskrant that he had logged into Trump’s account once before, in 2016, after guessing the password “yourefired” and was acting with good intentions to test the security of verified Twitter accounts. Trump’s team initially failed to answer Gevers, but Secret Service officials eventually thanked him for exposing the vulnerability.

Source: Huffington Post December 17, 2020 19:30 UTC