Security News > 2020 > September > Three middle-aged Dutch hackers slipped into Donald Trump's Twitter account days before 2016 US election

Three "Grumpy old hackers" in the Netherlands managed to access Donald Trump's Twitter account in 2016 by extracting his password from the 2012 Linkedin hack.

The pseudonymous, middle-aged chaps, named only as Edwin, Mattijs and Victor, told reporters they had lifted Trump's particulars from a database that was being passed about hackers, and tried it on his account.

Some considerable searching revealed the correct email address only for the "Middle aged" hackers to be defeated by Twitter detecting that the man who would become the 45th president of the United States had logged in earlier from New York.

VN published screenshots supplied by the three showing a browser seemingly logged into Trump's Twitter account, displaying a tweet dating from 27 October 2016 referring to a speech Trump delivered in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. The Dutch hackers also alleged that they found Trump's details in a database hacked from Ashley Madison, a dating website aimed at cheating spouses.

Despite trying to alert American authorities to just how insecure Trump's account was the hackers' efforts got nowhere, until in desperation they tried Netherland's National Cyber Security Centrum - which acknowledged receipt of their prepared breach report, which the increasingly concerned men had prepared immediately once they realised their digital trail was not particularly well covered.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/09/11/trump_twitter_account_recycled_password/