British Hacker Admits to Twitter Hack and Faces Decades in Prison

NEW YORK (AP) – A 23-year-old British hacker has admitted he was involved in breaking into the systems behind Twitter in July 2020. This allowed him and some accomplices to take control of several accounts. Politician Geert Wilders, among others, was the victim of this.

The hacker, who used the pseudonym PlugwalkJoe online, was arrested in 2021 in Estepona, Spain. At the end of April, Spain extradited him to the United States. After his confession, he will hear on June 23 what his sentence will be. He could face several decades in prison. As part of a settlement, the Briton has promised that he will waive nearly $ 800,000 in proceeds, the equivalent of more than 729,000 euros. He must also compensate victims. According to one of the prosecutors, the man “left an impressive trail of destruction”.

In July 2020, O’Connor and others managed to gain access to programs that Twitter used to control the platform. They could take control of accounts and allow others to access those accounts. They sold that control. They also used the access to scam others. For example, calls to transfer bitcoins appeared on the profiles of companies such as Apple and Uber and of prominent figures such as the then presidential candidate Joe Biden, business people such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg, rapper Kanye West and billionaire Elon Musk, who later became Twitter. bought.

PlugwalkJoe had gained access to actress Bella Thorne’s Snapchat account in 2019. He threatened to publish nude photos of her. To take that weapon off his hands, she then published the nude photos herself. In 2020, the hacker entered the TikTok account of Addison Rae Easterling, who is one of the most popular users with almost 89 million followers. PlugwalkJoe is also being punished for sending police to a minor’s home multiple times by posing as that child and making false reports. He also stole money from a company that trades in virtual money.