"Twitter Celebrity Hacker Pleads Guilty in US"

A British man recently pleaded guilty for his role in schemes to hack the Twitter accounts of celebrities like Barack Obama and Elon Musk and stealing $794,000 in cryptocurrency.  Joseph James O’Connor, 23, entered his guilty plea in a New York court after being extradited from Spain on April 26.  He was arrested nearly two years ago in Spain for the July 2020 hack of over 130 Twitter accounts, including those of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Obama, and Musk.  He and others in his hacking group hijacked the accounts and asked the owners’ followers to send them Bitcoin, promising to double their money.  In 2019 the group also used a technique known as sim card swaps to break their way into social media accounts of two media stars, not named in court filings but named in press reports as TikTok star Addison Rae and actress Bella Thorne.  The group threatened to release their private images and other information.  The group also used the same technique to steal $794,000 of virtual currency from a New York cryptocurrency company.  O’Connor, who went by the online name of PlugwalkJoe, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of computer intrusion, extortion, stalking, wire fraud, and money laundering.  The most serious of the charges brings up to 20 years in prison.

SecurityWeek reports: "Twitter Celebrity Hacker Pleads Guilty in US"