By Margi Murphy | Bloomberg
A British man has admitted to his involvement in one of the crucial high-profile social media hacks, a plot that included the hijacking of high US political and enterprise leaders’ Twitter accounts.
Joseph James O’Connor pleaded responsible in New York on Tuesday to hacking into the social community, a transfer that led to the impersonation of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and others to promote a Bitcoin scheme.
The 23-year-old, often known as “PlugwalkJoe,” was extradited from Spain on April 26, in response to the Division of Justice. The crimes concerned SIM swaps — a course of during which a telephone quantity is transferred to a brand new gadget with the intention to bypass safety measures — however went far past that, prosecutors stated.
“O’Connor used his refined technological skills for malicious functions — conducting a posh SIM swap assault to steal massive quantities of cryptocurrency, hacking Twitter, conducting pc intrusions to take over social media accounts, and even cyberstalking two victims, together with a minor,” stated US Legal professional Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York.
“O’Connor’s responsible plea as we speak is a testomony to the significance of regulation enforcement cooperation, and I thank our regulation enforcement companions for serving to to convey to justice to those that victimize others by means of cyberattacks,” he stated.
The Division of Justice alleges that O’Connor plotted with others to hijack Twitter accounts to advertise a scheme to defraud the general public, with O’Connor paying $10,000 for simply one of many accounts he requested. The co-conspirators used social engineering methods to persuade a Twitter worker into giving them entry to administrative instruments to the platform. These instruments had been used to take management of the high-profile accounts.
Based on the cost sheet, O’Connor pleaded responsible to quite a lot of cybercrimes, together with the exploitation of social media accounts, on-line extortion and cyberstalking.
In a single case, he performed a SIM swap to interrupt right into a sufferer’s Snapchat account and share the individual’s photos along with his co-conspirators. He performed the same hack in August 2020, utilizing SIM swapping once more to take over a high-profile TikTok account and threatening to put up private details about the sufferer on the Discord chat website.
O’Connor additionally pleaded responsible to “swatting” a minor in June and July 2020, which concerned calling native police departments and pretending to be the sufferer, claiming they had been planning to kill a number of folks. In response, each on-duty officer within the space was despatched to the sufferer’s house. O’Connor additionally despatched related messages to a highschool, a restaurant and a sheriff’s division. The following month he known as the sufferer’s household on a number of events and threatened to kill them.
As well as, O’Connor pleaded responsible to stealing $794,012.64 from a Manhattan-based cryptocurrency firm by SIM swapping a few of its executives.
He's scheduled to be sentenced on June 23.
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