On the night of July 16, Twitter was massively hacked. Fraudsters gained access to the accounts of celebrities and large companies and published records on them with a proposal to transfer bitcoins. Now the police have detained a group of hackers, whose “brain” was a 17-year-old teenager.
Graham Clark is now in the Hillsborough County Jail in Oregon, USA. He was the mastermind and brain behind the attack, reported on the WFLA , citing District Attorney Andrew Warren. The teenager faced 30 criminal charges, including for organized fraud and illegal use of personal data. Despite his age, he is going to be tried as an adult.
Shortly after Clark’s arrest, the US Department of Justice announced that he worked as part of the group, and told about the arrest of two more suspects. They were 22-year-old Nima Faseli and 19-year-old Mason Sheppard, who operated under the nicknames “Rolex” and “Chevon”, respectively. Faselli was charged with burglary, she faces up to 5 years in prison, and Sheppard – up to 20 for burglary and conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. Both will also have to pay a $ 250,000 fine if the charges are confirmed.
The group hacked Twitter accounts of large companies and famous personalities. Among the victims are Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Kanye West, as well as Apple and Uber. From their names, the attackers posted ads asking them to transfer bitcoins to a teenager’s account in Tampa.
They also gained access to internal network administration tools. It is reported that in the course of their actions several hundred people were injured, and they received 400 transfers totaling $ 100,000 in just one day. Warren described their actions as “an intricately organized attack of unprecedented magnitude.”
́After the attack, Twitter deleted posts and temporarily restricted the ability to publish for verified accounts. Later, the company said that the hacker attack was carried out using social engineering, and also noted that after the hack, their access to the network’s internal tools was limited.
Shortly after the arrest of the hackers, Twitter issued a statement thanking the local police, the IRS, the Secret Service and the FBI for their investigation.
“We appreciate the prompt actions of law enforcement agencies and will continue to cooperate with them as the case develops,” the company said.
They also talked about being transparent and regularly updating information about the investigation. In addition, the network has removed restrictions on the publication of posts by popular accounts and on changing passwords for some users.