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18-year-old admits to Twitter hack

Details have emerged of how micro-blogging site Twitter's online security was compromised, highlighting the need for internet users to have strong passwords for their accounts.

An 18-year-old student has admitted to breaching the site's internal systems by using a dictionary password guesser, which found a loophole in an account that by luck, happened to belong to one of the firm's staff members.

The teenage hacker, who goes by the name GMZ claims in an interview with the Wired Threat Level blog that the staff in question had the word "happiness" as her password.

According to the hacker, cracking the site was easy as it allowed an unlimited number of log-in attempts.

Following the internet security breach, famous Twitter users including Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Fox News, Facebook and a CNN anchor all had their accounts interfered with.

Commenting on the phenomenon earlier in the week, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, said: "We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline."