Yesterday, Tuesday, the British hacker pleaded guilty. for his role in a series of cyberattacks, the most spectacular of which in 2020 targeted the Twitter accounts of figures such as Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Elon Musk..

Joseph O’Connor, 23, was arrested in Spain in July 2021 and extradited to the US on April 26, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

In addition to attacking Twitter, he is accused of Hacking TikTok and Snapchat Accountsand for online bullying and blackmail.

“O’Connor used his technological abilities for malicious purposes (…) to steal cryptocurrency, hack into Twitter, take control of social media accounts and molest two victims, one of whom was a minor,” said prosecutor Damian Williams, who took over the matter. .

July 15, 2020 Twitter became the target of a massive hacking attack on 130 very popular accounts.

In 45 of them – including the owner’s Amazon account Jeff Bezos – wrote a message: “I decided to help my community. All bitcoins sent to my address here will be doubled.”

Those messages, which were seen by about 350 million users, were quickly deleted, but, according to the study, the scam netted the hackers over $100,000 in cryptocurrencies.

Justice followed the bitcoin trail and quickly tracked down three young hackers: Graham Clark, an American who was 17 at the time, Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old Briton, and Nima Fazeli, a 22-year-old American.

The organizer of the attack is considered to be a 17-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to the charges against him. After an agreement with the authorities, he was sentenced in 2022 to three years in prison.

Two other men, as well as O’Connor, were charged, with the latter facing more than 70 years in prison.

Cybersecurity experts immediately referred to Joseph O’Connor, better known as PlugWalkJoe.

Immediately after his arrest, American actress Bella Thorne revealed that he threatened her to release nude photos of her that he had stolen in 2019 from her Snapchat account.

With information from APE-MPE and AFP