UK man pleads guilty to Twitter hack on Joe Biden, Elon Musk accounts
The Twitter logo is displayed on a smartphone screen on April 14, 2021.
LONDON — A U.K. man pleaded guilty to helping orchestrate a high-profile hack on the Twitter accounts of numerous celebrities and politicians including Elon Musk, Joe Biden and Kanye West.
Joseph O'Connor, 23, who is known under an online alias as "PlugwalkJoe," submitted his guilty plea in a New York court on Tuesday, according to a Department of Justice press release. He was extradited from Spain last month.
O'Connor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, committing computer intrusions, making extortive and threatening communications, cyberstalking, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Combined, the charges carry a maximum sentence of 77 years, the Justice Department said.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the Justice Department's criminal division said that O'Connor's activities were "flagrant and malicious."
"He harassed, threatened, and extorted his victims, causing substantial emotional harm," Polite, Jr. said in a statement Tuesday.
"Like many criminal actors, O'Connor tried to stay anonymous by using a computer to hide behind stealth accounts and aliases from outside the United States. But this plea shows that our investigators and prosecutors will identify, locate, and bring to justice such criminals to ensure they face the consequences for their crimes."
The attack, which took place in 2020, targeted about 130 people, Twitter said at the time. Hackers took control of the accounts to promote a bitcoin scam, directing users to send the funds to several bitcoin addresses.
Twitter said in 2020, shortly after the cyberattack took place, that it believes the hack was a "coordinated social engineering attack" on its employees — in other words, insiders at the company were tricked into handing over access to internal systems and tools.
The attackers were able to gain access to Twitter's internal controls by compromising a small number of employees, according to a July 2020 Twitter blog post.
"O'Connor communicated with others regarding purchasing unauthorized access to a variety of Twitter accounts, including accounts associated with public figures around the world," the Justice Department said Wednesday.
"A number of Twitter accounts targeted by O'Connor were subsequently transferred away from their rightful owners. O'Connor agreed to purchase unauthorized access to one Twitter account for $10,000."
Source: CNBC
