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Joseph James O’Connor, a 23-year-old British citizen extradited from Spain to the USA on April 26, pleaded responsible to a number of expenses, together with hacking the social media platform Twitter in 2020.
O’Connor, who additionally makes use of the web title PlugwalkJoe, has been charged with stealing cryptocurrencies value $794,000 from a Manhattan-based firm by way of a SIM Swap assault. U.S. prosecutors stated O’Connor would forfeit the funds and pay his victims restitution.
Moreover, O’Connor has been indicted for hacking Twitter and Tik Tok accounts and selling fraudulent schemes. He has pleaded responsible to all these expenses, and he might face a most sentence of 77 years on all counts of expenses.
Malicious Acts
“Joseph O’Connor, a/okay/a “PlugwalkJoe,” used his refined technological talents for malicious functions – conducting a fancy SIM swap assault to steal giant quantities of cryptocurrency, hacking Twitter, conducting pc intrusions to take over social media accounts, and even cyberstalking two victims, together with a minor sufferer,” U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams stated in a statement.
O’Connor’s malicious exploits included hacking of verified Twitter accounts of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Joe Biden, a presidential candidate at the moment. As well as, Reuters said the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Invoice Gates, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and Michael Bloomberg have been additionally affected.
The information company added that he used these accounts with tens of millions of followers to solicit digital foreign money, forcing Twitter to cease publishing messages from these profiles for a number of hours till these have been totally sanitized and secured.
Scams on the Rise
A current FBI report revealed that U.S. residents misplaced over $10 billion in on-line frauds in 2022, out of which $2.57 billion was drained by varied crypto funding scams. Hackers typically break into well-known people’ social media accounts, promote fraudulent crypto funding schemes, and prey on unsuspecting buyers. In 2021, U.S. residents misplaced solely $907 million in crypto scams.
Scams by way of verified Twitter accounts increased notably forward of Ethereum Merge. Amid the hype and pleasure throughout the transition, in a single occasion, malicious entities hacked the official Twitter deal with of Go First Airline and adjusted it to vitalik.eth. The show image was additionally changed with that of Vitalik Buterin. The compromised account then promoted a faux giveaway rip-off of $100,000 ETH.
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