A hacker who is a UK citizen has just been sentenced to 5 years in prison in the US for his part in the July 2020 Twitter hack.
According to The Hacker News, Joseph James O’Connor (PlugwalkJoe), 24, was sentenced more than a month after pleading guilty in New York (USA). O’Connor was arrested in Spain in July 2021.
The famous Twitter hack allowed O’Connor and his co-conspirators to gain unauthorized access to Twitter’s tools, using them to take over 130 well-known accounts in order to carry out a crypto scam, thanks to So that made about 120,000 USD in illegal profits.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said the co-conspirators sold Twitter account access to others. O’Connor contacted contacts to buy unauthorized access to the accounts of celebrities around the world.
The 24-year-old hacker is also accused of orchestrating SIM-swapping attacks to gain control of victims’ Snapchat and TikTok accounts. The report also said there was also a case of targeting a New York-based crypto company to steal approximately $794,000 worth of assets at the time of the attack.
The DoJ said that while stealing and transferring the cryptocurrency, O’Connor and his accomplices laundered the money through dozens of transfers and transactions, and exchanged some for Bitcoin using exchange services. In the end, part of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into an account controlled by this hacker.
O’Connor’s list of offenses was to spy on two victims via cyberspace, including a minor, in June and July 2020 by saying the person was threatening to shoot people to incite motives. law enforcement agency.
According to TechCrunch, this hacker will continue to be monitored for 3 years after he is released from prison, and will also be confiscated $ 794,000