Claims that a Dutch hacker was able to guess Donald Trump's Twitter password are being treated with extreme scepticism by official sources and security experts.
Victor Gevers, an internet security expert and self-described ethical hacker, says he managed to successfully gain access to the US President’s account last week after guessing the password was "maga2020!".
Mr Gevers told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant he wanted to see how strong the President’s online security was after learning Mr Trump didn’t have two-factor authentication on.
“I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information,” he told the paper..
The White House, Twitter, and other internet security experts have rubbished Mr Gevers' claims.
“We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today," Twitter said in a statement.
"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."
Among other inconsistencies is the fact that the "maga2020!" password is only nine characters, while Twitter's criteria for strong passwords says they should be "at least 10 characters long".
White House press secretary Judd Deere emphatically denied the claims.
"This is absolutely not true," he said.
"But we don't comment on security procedures around the president's social media accounts."
