Dutch prosecutors have confirmed that US President Donald Trump's Twitter page was successfully compromised in October, adding that they would not punish a hacker, who was identified as Victor Gevers, while a probe into the matter was opened at the time.
“We believe 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 public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
They added that even though hacking was a criminal offence in the Netherlands, the so-called “special circumstances”, which are also referred to as “responsible disclosure”, may keep prosecutors from taking action against Gevers.
“Both the hacker and the American authorities have been informed of the outcome of the investigation”, the prosecutors pointed out.
The statement followed the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant reporting in late October that Gevers, who works as a cyber security expert, hacked Trump’s Twitter account after he correctly guessed the president’s password “maga2020!” and then managed to post tweets in POTUS name. MAGA is an acronym referring to the Trump election slogan “Make America Great Again”.
Gevers told De Volkskrant that he expected to be blocked by Twitter after four failed attempts or “at least would be asked to provide additional information”.
The 44-year-old added that he tried to put US authorities on alert over the hacking and that he was finally contacted by US Secret Service officials, who thanked him for notifying them of the security breach.
“So, he tries to warn others. Trump’s campaign team, his family. He sends messages via Twitter asking if someone will call Trump’s attention to the fact that his Twitter account is not safe. He tags the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], the White House, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], Twitter themselves. No response”, De Volkskrant reported.
Twitter and the White House, however, denied the newspaper’s report, with a spokesperson for the social networking giant stating that they had seen “no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands […]”.
“We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government”, the spokesperson underscored.
Twitter Censorship of Trump's Posts
The Dutch prosecutors’ confirmation of Gevers hacking Trump’s account comes after Twitter started to censor a whole array of tweets by the president, putting up a disclaimer reading "some or all of the content shared in this tweet is disputed and might be misleading about a [3 November US presidential] election or other civic process".
In October, the Media Research Centre, a Virginia-based content analysis group, reported it had found that Trump was censored on Facebook or Twitter 65 times over the past year and a half, while his Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden faced zero instances of censorship to his social media pages.
