A photo of Twitter’s recent owner Elon Musk surrounded by the Twitter logo on this photo in Warsaw, Poland, November 8, 2022.
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LONDON — A British man has admitted helping to orchestrate the high-profile hacking of the Twitter accounts of many celebrities and politicians, including Elon Musk, Joe Biden and Kanye West.
According to the Department of Justice, 23-year-old Joseph O’Connor, known by his online nickname “PlugwalkJoe”, pleaded guilty in a Latest York court. press release. He was extradited from Spain last month.
O’Connor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer hacking, committing computer hacking, extortion and intimidation of communications, cyberstalking, and conspiracy to commit electronic fraud and money laundering. Combined, the charges carry a maximum sentence of 77 years, the Department of Justice said.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the Justice Department’s criminal division said O’Connor’s actions were “flagrant and malicious”.
“He harassed, threatened and extorted his victims, causing significant emotional damage,” said Polite, Jr. in Tuesday’s statement.
“Like many other criminals, O’Connor attempted to remain anonymous through the use of a pc to hide behind hidden accounts and pseudonyms from outside the United States. But this allegation shows that our investigators and prosecutors will discover, locate and bring to justice such criminals to ensure they face consequences for his or her crimes.”
The attack, which took place in 2020, targeted around 130 people, Twitter reported at the time. Hackers took control of accounts to promote a bitcoin scam, directing users to send funds to several bitcoin addresses.
Twitter said in 2020, shortly after the cyberattack, that it believed the hack was a “coordinated social engineering attack” on its employees – in other words, people inside the company were tricked into giving access to internal systems and tools.
Attackers were able to gain access to Twitter’s internal controls, compromising a small number of employees, according to Twitter July 2020. blog post.
“O’Connor has been in communication with others about purchasing unauthorized access to various Twitter accounts, including accounts related to public figures around the world,” the Department of Justice said Wednesday.
“Several of the Twitter accounts targeted by O’Connor were subsequently transferred from their rightful owners. O’Connor agreed to buy unauthorized access to one Twitter account for $10,000.”
“Impressive Trail of Destruction”
O’Connor has also been charged and pleaded guilty for his role in the SIM swapping attack, where an attacker convinces a mobile operator to transfer an individual’s phone number to their device so as to bypass multi-factor authentication on online accounts.
According to the Department of Justice, the attack targeted several high-profile cryptocurrency firms and executives, including Binance, Tron founder Justin Sun, and Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, and resulted in the theft of $794,000 value of digital assets. O’Connor agreed to donate $794,000 to the court and pay restitution to the victims of his crimes, the Department of Justice said.
O’Connor also hacked the account of “one of TikTok’s most visible accounts” and threatened to share sensitive, personal material related to the victim of the cyberattack with individuals who joined a particular server in the Discord chat app, the Department of Justice said.
U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey of the Northern District of California said O’Connor “left a powerful trail of destruction” in the aftermath of his crime wave.
“This case is a warning that the reach of the law is long and that criminals in all places who use computers to commit crimes may face consequences for his or her actions in places they didn’t expect,” Ramsey said.
O’Connor was one of the 4 people charged with this program. In 2021, American teenager Graham Ivan Clark pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
Nima Fazeli of Orlando, Florida, and Mason Sheppard of Bognor Regis, UK were also charged with burglary.
O’Connor was arrested in July 2021 in Estepona, a resort town on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain, by Spanish police at the request of US authorities.
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