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It is not clear if the hacker posted anything on Mr Obama's Twitter page
President Barack Obama talks on the phone en route to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in this handout picture taken on March 19, 2010
A Frenchman who police say hacked Twitter accounts belonging to US President Barack Obama and celebrities could face jail.
The unemployed 25-year-old was arrested on Tuesday after an operation lasting several months, conducted by French police with agents from the FBI.
The 25-year-old is said to have hacked into the micro-blogging website, by simply guessing users' passwords.
The suspect reportedly targeted other celebrities, including Britney Spears.
After being questioned by police, he was ordered to appear at court in the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand on 24 June.
Hacking into a database in France is a crime which can carry a two-year jail term.
The suspect, who used the pseudonym "Hacker Croll", had no specialist training, Adeline Champagnat, head of the French central office against online fraud, told Reuters news agency.
He gained access to Twitter accounts by simply working out the answers to password reminder questions on targets' e-mail accounts, according to investigators.
An unemployed Frenchman has been arrested for targeting the Twitter accounts of President Barack Obama and singer Britney Spears, French police said on Wednesday.
Captain Adeline Champagnat, a senior member of the police cyber crimes unit, said the 25-year-old man gained access to passwords of Twitter administrators and used them to try to break into the accounts of U.S. politicians and stars.
"He didn't get as far as their personal accounts. But he had gained control of Twitter," she told Reuters Television in an interview.
She said the FBI had tipped off the French police in July last year that one or more people were trying to get access to Twitter and had gained control of the social network.
That enabled them to create and delete accounts and steal confidential information.
The hacker, who went by the online name of HackerCroll, is under arrest in the central French town of Clermont Ferrand.
He was known to have carried out minor internet fraud but in this case was driven by the thrill of the challenge and appeared to be more interested in the private life of his victims than on obtaining sensitive data, Champagnat said.
"His aim wasn't to make money. It was simply to show that he was able to access accounts of Twitter members. And the best proof of that is that he did screen grabs of certain confidential data which he tried to post on blogs that are reserved for pirates or hackers," she said.
She said several FBI agents were currently in France to help their French counterparts carry out searches.
"The collaboration was very good with the FBI and it's always very good with the FBI, because there's a real exchange of information. It's good cooperation to arrest the offender," she said.
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