On 5 August, hearings were held in the case of 17-year-old Graham Clarke, accused of a large-scale Twitter hack. This is reported by Tampa Bay Times.
The teenager was charged with 30 counts, including organized fraud, misappropriation of personal data, and unauthorized access to other people’s devices.
According to the authorities, the hacker’s attack resulted in the theft of bitcoins worth about $120,000. If convicted, he could face up to 200 years in prison.
Before the hearings began, Clarke, through his attorney, notified the court that he is innocent. He is currently held in the Hillsborough County Jail in Florida.
The hacker’s hearings were conducted via videoconference using the Zoom service. The broadcast was publicly accessible; no password was required to join.
Pranksters posing as reporters from CNN and the BBC joined the broadcast. They interrupted the judge, used profanity, and played rap.
Well perhaps unsurprisingly the accused Twitter hacker-Bitcoin thief’s first (virtual) hearing was shut down within 25 minutes due to relentless Zoombombing. (It ended a minute after this when someone screenshared a Porn Hub video.) pic.twitter.com/fGiceq4WfN
— Jen Wieczner (@jenwieczner) August 5, 2020
After a porn video appeared on the main screen, the judge had to adjourn the hearing.
During the conference, Clarke’s lawyers urged the court to reduce the bail from $725,000 to a more reasonable amount in their view, but the judge rejected the request, according to a reporter for FOX 13.
As reported, in the night of July 16 a major attack on Twitter occurred, during which the accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates and other businesspeople and celebrities were hacked. During the attack, the attacker conducted a fake cryptocurrency giveaway under their name, netting about $120,000 in BTC.
Hackers gained access to internal tools of the social network through phishing directed at employees’ mobile phones.
Presumably Graham Clarke was the mastermind behind the hack. His accomplices were 22-year-old Nima Fazeli from Orlando and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard, a Briton.
The teens themselves said they had received an order to hack from another person, about whom there is no information.
Earlier, Clarke had previously engaged in cybercrimes. According to The New York Times, in 2019 he gained remote access to the phone of Seattle-based investor Greg Bennett and stole 164 BTC (worth $856,000 at the time).
More than $3 million in Bitcoin is held in Graham Clarke’s wallets stored. The defence says the funds have legitimate origins, but prosecutors have doubts on that score.
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