The other day, a New York court sentenced 24-year-old Joseph James O’Connor, known by his online pseudonym PlugWalkJoe, who is guilty of one of the most high-profile hacks in recent history – the Twitter hack.

What does it mean

The hack happened in 2020. Joseph, along with several other hackers, tricked some Twitter employees into handing over their internal login details. Next, the hackers gained access to a powerful internal control panel on the site. In total, they hacked more than 130 accounts of famous people and companies, including Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Apple, Uber, and others.

The hack was part of a massive bitcoin scam that generated tweets purporting to be celebrities asking subscribers to send bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money. As a result, about 350 million Twitter users viewed suspicious posts, and thousands of deceived users believed and invested their money.

In addition, O’Connor admitted to other hacking crimes, including gaining access to a known TikTok account and stalking a minor. The maximum sentence for this is over 70 years, but Joseph was only sentenced to 5 years in prison. In court, he stated that his crimes were stupid and senseless, apologized to his victims and asked the judge for leniency.

The convict also agreed to pay at least $794,000 to the victims of his crimes.

Source: BBC
Photo: Reuters