WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st July, 2021) Spanish police have arrested at the request of the US authorities a Briton wanted in connection with a Twitter hack that compromised more than 100 high-profile accounts on the microblogging service, including that of President Joe Biden, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.
UK citizen Joseph O'Connor, 22, was arrested "on multiple charges in connection with the July 2020 hack of Twitter that resulted in the compromise of more than 130 Twitter accounts, including those belonging to politicians, celebrities and companies," the Justice Department said in a statement.
The compromised accounts belonged to former President Barack Obama,�investor Warren Buffett, Tesla chief Elon Musk and others, according to the statement.
The arrest comes after 18-year-old US citizen Graham Clark was sentenced in March to three years in prison following a guilty plea to various fraud charges in connection with the 2020 hack.
Clark, who was 17 at the time of the offense, was able to raise 12.86 bitcoin, which was the equivalent of over $117,000 at the time, by gaining access to high-profile Twitter accounts and asking followers to send bitcoin to a cryptocurrency account.
The Justice Department said in the statement that O'Connor, who was also sought for computer intrusions related to takeovers of TikTok and Snapchat user accounts, will be sentenced in the United States if he is convicted.
O'Connor is charged with three counts of conspiracy to intentionally access a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer; two counts of intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and obtaining information from a protected computer; one count of conspiracy to intentionally access a computer without authorization and, with the intent to extort from a person a thing of value, transmitting a communication containing a threat, the statement said.
In addition, O'Connor faces another count of making extortive communications; one count of making threatening communications; and two counts of cyberstalking, the statement said.
Twitter said last year that it believed the hack was a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of its employees with access to internal systems and tools. The company said at the time that the hackers accessed the direct message inbox for up to 36 of the accounts, which included one elected official in the Netherlands.
