White House, Twitter deny that Dutch hacker accessed Trump's account

Both the White House and social media platform Twitter deny that a Dutch ethical hacker managed to gain access to United States president Donald Trump's Twitter account. Vrij Nederland reported that ethical hacker Victor Gevers broke into Trump's account last week to show that it was not properly secured.

"We've seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today," a spokesperson for Twitter told The Verge. They added that Trump's account, and other high-profile, election-related accounts were proactively given extra security in the run-up to the American presidential election.

Judd Deere, the White House deputy press secretary, also denied the Dutch hacker's claim. "This is absolutely not true," he said to The Verge, but provided no further information. "We don't comment on security procedures around the President's social media accounts."

Vrij Nederland and RTL Nieuws both report that Gevers shared evidence of his hack into Trump's account with them. Gevers said that he posted no tweets, and read no personal messages, although this was possible. He hacked into the account purely to show that it needed more security.

According to Gevers, Trump's password was 'Maga2020!' and the United States president had no two-step verification in place. That was added to the account after the hack, Gevers said.

This is the second time Gevers broke into Trump's account. He also did so with a group of other hackers in 2016.