Joseph James O’Connor, aka Plughawk, 23, was extradited to the US from Spain last month
Twitter deactivated all verified accounts at the time and disabled the Tweet feature in an effort to target the hackers.
A UK national accused of hacking a Twitter account as part of a bitcoin scheme has pleaded guilty to his role in cyberstalking and computer hacking that targeted several high-profile social media accounts, including the July 2020 Twitter hack.
Joseph James O’Connor, aka Plugwalk Joe, 23, was extradited to the US last month from Spain, where he was awaiting trial for harassing, threatening and extorting his victims .
According to Gizmodo, O’Connor was arrested for the first time in 2021 for attempting to take control of 130 Twitter accounts, including those of US President Joe Biden, US socialite and model Kim Kardashian, and Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk .
O’Connor wrote on Biden’s account in July 2020, “All bitcoin sent to the address below will be doubled back! If you send $1,000, I’ll send back $2,000. Do this for only 30 minutes. Enjoy! “
Twitter deactivated all verified accounts at the time and disabled the Tweet feature in an effort to target the hackers.
Twitter’s support team wrote in July 2020, “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), an FBI investigation found that O’Connor and his co-conspirators were able to transfer control of certain Twitter accounts to unauthorized users for a fee.
In addition, the investigation revealed that in some cases, the group took advantage of control of certain Twitter accounts for personal gain, and engaged in fraudulent activities that affected other users of the platform.
As part of this, it was revealed that O’Connor had entered into an agreement to buy access to a specific account for the sum of $10,000.
“Like many criminal actors, O’Connor tried to remain anonymous from outside the US by using a computer to hide behind secret accounts and aliases. But this plea shows that our investigators and prosecutors will identify, track down and bring such criminals to justice, ensuring they face the consequences of their crimes.”
As part of his guilty plea, O’Connor has agreed to pay restitution and forfeiture of more than $794,000 to all victims. His sentencing is scheduled for June 23 in a New York district court.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
