UK Hacker O’Connor admits 2020 Twitter Hack and Cybercrimes. Joseph James O’Connor has admitted to taking part in a number of cybercrimes. The most heinous was in the July 2020 hack. At that time, hundreds of popular Twitter accounts were taken over. O’Connor, who goes by the online name PlugwalkJoe, is from Liverpool.
engadget: O’Connor Admits 2020 Twitter Hack and Cybercrimes
In April, he was taken from Spain and sent to the US. If you remember, the people behind the 2020 Twitter hack took over the accounts of famous people. They include Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Elon Musk and used them to push crypto scams. Graham Ivan Clark, who was thought to be the teenage mastermind behind the breach, pleaded guilty in 2021 and agreed to serve three years in jail.
O’Connor admits his guilt:
The Justice Department explains about this UK person admits to the 2020 Twitter hack r and other cybercrime. He says that O’Connor talked with the other people involved in that Twitter hack about buying illegal access to Twitter accounts. He is said to have paid $10,000 to get entry to at least one Twitter account. Using SIM swapping, he may have also been involved in hacking a TikTok account with millions of users and a Snapchat account.
In both cases, O’Connor and his accomplices stole private personal information from the victims and then threatened to make it public. Even though the DOJ didn’t say who the victims were, The Guardian says that Addison Rae, a TikTok star, and Bella Thorne, an actor, were named in news stories as the people who were hurt.
The hacker was also accused to play foul games in the crypto company in Manhattan:
From March to May 2019, O’Connor is also said to have broken into a crypto company in Manhattan to steal $794,000 worth of coins. They tried to get close to three leaders of the company by swapping SIM cards, and they were able to get close to one of them. With the executive’s passwords, they were able to get into the company’s accounts and computer systems without permission. Then, they used crypto exchanges and repeated transfers to get rid of the stolen cryptocurrency.
O’Connor has entered a guilty plea to a broad variety of accusations, the most serious of which are conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. If convicted of both of these crimes, O’Connor faces a possible combined term of twenty years in prison. On June 23, he is scheduled to get his punishment.
For More Technology Updates, Click Here.