JAKARTA - Spanish police have arrested a 22-year-old British citizen. The young man, known as Joseph O'Connor, was arrested in connection with the hacking of 130 high-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Kanye West.
Subsequently the hacked account was used to tweet followers, encouraging them to join the Bitcoin scam, in July last year.
In addition to twitter, Joseph O'Connor has also been charged with hacking TikTok and Snapchat. He also faces other charges, including three counts of conspiracy to knowingly access a computer without permission and obtain information from a protected computer.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the San Francisco Division has also been investigating the case, assisted by the Internal Revenue Service's Cybercrime Investigations Unit and the United States Secret Service.
Previously, authorities had indicted three men in connection with the offence, a 19-year-old, from Bognor Regis, another teenager and a 22-year-old from Florida.
The hacker took control of a public figure's account and sent a series of tweets asking followers to transfer cryptocurrency to a specific Bitcoin wallet to receive double the money in return.
As a result of their actions, Twitter had to stop all activities from verified accounts from the tweeting process (sending tweets).
The social media company also explained that the easy hackers had targeted Twitter employees to steal credentials to access the system.
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