Hacker who took over Biden, Elon Musk’s Twitter accounts plead guilty

A UK national accused of hacking Twitter accounts as part of a Bitcoin scheme has pleaded guilty to cyber surveillance and computer hacking that targeted several high-profile social media accounts, including the July 2020 Twitter hack.

Joseph James O’Connor, aka PlugwalkJoe, 23, was extradited from Spain to the United States last month, where he was awaiting trial on charges of harassing, threatening and extorting victims.

According to Gizmodo, O’Connor was first arrested in 2021 for trying to control 130 Twitter accounts, including US President Joe Biden, American socialite and model Kim Kardashian, and Tesla & Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

In July 2020, O’Connor wrote to Biden’s account: “Any Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back double! If you send $1,000, I’ll send back $2,000. Just do this for 30 minutes. Enjoy!”

Twitter responded at the time by deactivating all verified accounts and disabling the tweet feature in an attempt to target hackers.

“We discovered a coordinated human manipulation attack that successfully targeted some of our employees who had access to internal systems and tools,” Twitter’s support team wrote in July 2020.

According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), an FBI investigation found that O’Connor and his co-conspirators were able to transfer control of some Twitter accounts to unauthorized users for a fee.

Additionally, the investigation revealed that in certain cases the group exploited its control over certain Twitter accounts for personal gain and engaged in fraudulent activities that affected other users of the platform.

As part of this, it was discovered that O’Connor had entered into an agreement to purchase access to a particular account for the sum of $10,000.

“Like many criminal actors, O’Connor attempted to remain anonymous by using a computer to hide behind encrypted accounts and aliases from outside the United States. But this petition shows that our investigators and prosecutors will identify, locate and bring to justice such criminals to ensure they face the consequences of their crimes.” , Deputy Attorney General Kenneth A Polite, Jr of DOJ’s Criminal Division said in a statement.

As part of his guilty plea, O’Connor has agreed to pay restitution to all victims and will forfeit just over $7,94,000. His sentencing is scheduled for June 23 in New York District Court.

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