A British man who hacked high profile Twitter accounts as part of a Bitcoin scam has been jailed in the US, writes the BBC*.
Joseph O’Connor, from Liverpool, hijacked more than 130 accounts in July 2020, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk. The 24-year-old pleaded guilty to hacking charges last month.
On Friday, he was sentenced to five years for cyber crimes, according to the United States Attorney’s Office in the southern district of New York. The hacking was part of a major Bitcoin scam that generated tweets asking followers to send Bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money.
As a result of the fraud, an estimated 350 million Twitter users viewed suspicious tweets from official accounts of some of the platform’s biggest users, including Apple, Uber, Kanye West and Bill Gates. Thousands were duped into believing that a crypto giveaway was real.
Jake Moore, Global Security Advisor at ESET comments:
“Cybercriminals are rarely prosecuted due to complex investigations and the vital requirement of quality strong evidence. However, when enough time and resources are invested into an offence or series of offences, the payoff can be huge sending shockwaves around criminal communities. However, not all crimes are investigated so it remains vital that people are made aware of the tricks used by threat actors to remain protected.
Some of these twitter account takeovers were conducted by a SIM swap attack where account owners had SMS two factor authentication set up. But unfortunately their SIM cards were compromised by the attacker in clever social engineering tactics used upon their phone carrier so other forms of 2FA are a better fit. Authenticator apps and security keys are more robust ways of keeping attackers out plus it is a good idea to make sure your security PIN on your phone carrier account cannot be easily guessed.”
*ESET does not bear any responsibility for the accuracy of this information.
ESET Ireland 