Twitter hack: Joseph O'Connor jailed for celebrity cyber attack

A British antheral who hacked precocious illustration Twitter accounts arsenic portion of a Bitcoin scam has been jailed successful the US.

Joseph O'Connor, from Liverpool, hijacked much than 130 accounts successful July 2020, including those of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk.

The 24-year-old pleaded blameworthy to hacking charges past month.

On Friday, helium was sentenced to 5 years for cyber crimes, according to the United States Attorney's Office successful the confederate territory of New York.

The hacking was portion of a large Bitcoin scam that generated tweets asking followers to nonstop Bitcoin to an account, promising to treble their money.

As a effect of the fraud, an estimated 350 cardinal Twitter users viewed suspicious tweets from authoritative accounts of immoderate 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.

O'Connor, who went by the alias PlugwalkJoe, was extradited from Spain to the US successful April and past period pleaded blameworthy to hacking charges that carried a full maximum condemnation of much than 70 years.

Three different men person been charged implicit the scam, with US teen Graham Clark pleading guilty to his portion successful the deception successful 2021.

The hackers telephoned a tiny fig of Twitter employees with a believable communicative to person them to manus implicit their interior login details - which yet granted them entree to Twitter's administrative tools.

They managed to usage social engineering tricks - much akin to conmen than high-level cyber-criminals - to get entree to the almighty interior power sheet astatine the site.

In a statement, US Assistant Attorney-General Kenneth Polite Jr described O'Connor's actions arsenic "flagrant and malicious", saying helium had "harassed, threatened and extorted his victims, causing important affectional harm".

The US justness section besides said O'Connor admitted different hacking crimes including gaining entree to a high-profile TikTok relationship and stalking a minor.

He was besides ordered to wage astir $800,000 successful forfeiture, the US justness section said.

Why not travel BBC North West connected Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You tin besides nonstop communicative ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk