Hacker breaks into Obama's Twitter account

WASHINGTON, USA: A French hacker, who goes by the name of "Hacker Croll", claimed that he had hacked into the internal system of Twitter last week, giving him access to millions of accounts including high profile users such as US President Barack Obama, Lily Allen and Ashton Kutcher.

He said that he gained access to the controls by hacking into the account of Twitter's director of product management. The hacker even uploaded a string of screenshots showing his access to the internal website settings.

One such shot displayed private details of the President's account, including the IP address of the last person to use it, according to a report in News.com.au.

This is understood to be the first time anyone has managed to hack into Twitter's internal administration system, though there were reports of celebrity accounts being hacked earlier too.

In January another hacker had gained access to Twitter and posted fake updates to a number of high-profile accounts includingBritney Spears and Obama.

Confirming that "unauthorized access" was gained by an outsider, Twitter founder Biz Stone said only 10 individual accounts were viewed during this unlawful access period.

"Our initial security reviews and investigations indicate that no account information was altered or removed in any way. However, we discovered that 10 individual accounts were viewed during this unauthorized access," Stone said.