The 24-year-old hacker who hacked Twitter and the accounts of Musk, Apple and Biden is sentenced to 5 years in prison instead of 70 years

A court in New York recently 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: hacking into Twitter.

Details

The hack took place in 2020. Joseph, along with several other hackers, tricked some Twitter employees into handing over their internal login details. The hackers then gained access to the 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 major bitcoin scam that generated tweets in which allegedly celebrities asked subscribers to send bitcoins to their accounts, promising to double their money. As a result, some 350 million Twitter users viewed the suspicious posts, and thousands of deceived users believed and invested their money.

In addition, O'Connor admitted to other hacking offences, including gaining access to a known TikTok account and stalking a minor. The maximum sentence for these is more than 70 years, but Joseph was only sentenced to five years in prison. In court, he said his crimes were stupid and senseless, apologised to his victims and asked the judge for leniency.

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

Source: BBC
Photo: Reuters