A British man has been arrested in Spain on suspicion of hacking some 130 celebrities” Twitter accounts final summer season.
Joseph O’Connor was arrested within the Spanish coastal resort city of Estepona on a world arrest warrant, the U.S. Division of Justice mentioned on Wednesday.
He has been charged in the USA for alleged involvement in a widespread Twitter hack that compromised the accounts of numerous distinguished U.S. politicians, celebrities and tech moguls in July 2020.
Prosecutors have additionally accused O’Connor of breaking into accounts on the social media apps TikTok and Snapchat, and of “cyberstalking a juvenile”.
A prison grievance has been filed in a federal court docket within the Northern District of California. O’Connor is formally charged with cyberstalking, making extortive and threatening communications, and deliberately accessing a pc with out authorisation.
O’Connor, who is understood by the web alias PlugWalkJoe, denied wrongdoing in police interviews.
Throughout the high-profile safety breach, pretend tweets had been despatched from numerous high-profile social media accounts, urging followers to ship them Bitcoin funds.
“I’ve determined to assist my neighborhood. All bitcoins despatched to my handle beneath might be doubled,” a few of the accounts tweeted.
Amongst others, the cyberattack focused then-U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden, in addition to former President Barack Obama, and one other candidate Mike Bloomberg.
Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk additionally noticed their accounts compromised.
The messages had been swiftly deleted, however investigators estimate the rip-off would have allowed the hackers to absorb greater than $100,000 {dollars} in cryptocurrency.
Twitter mentioned the hackers had focused a handful of workers by way of a phishing operation by phone to interrupt by way of the platform’s double authentication system.
In September, the social community introduced that they had strengthened the safety of superstar accounts.
In March, a Florida teenager pled responsible to having masterminded the operation and was sentenced to 3 years in jail. Court docket papers filed final yr mentioned the plot originated in a web based discussion board for folks seeking to get hold of authentic, beneficial social media usernames.
There’s an underground marketplace for stealing and buying and selling sought-after handles on Twitter and different social media websites equivalent to Instagram, or the gaming worlds of Minecraft and Fortnite. Earlier this yr, Twitter mentioned it was cracking down on accounts linked to the buying and selling of such usernames.
