ByDavey Winder,
Senior Contributor.
Hacking is not a crime. Criminal hacking is, and that’s what we read about the most. Whether it’s hackers giving Windows users the finger, targeting hotel guests, or, most aptly on this occasion, compromising social media accounts. Perhaps the most infamous of social media hackers, responsible for the compromise of Twitter accounts belonging to Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, to name but a few very high-profile users, is currently serving out a five-year sentence for these crimes. But as well as losing his liberty, Joseph James O'Connor has now just lost his Bitcoin stash.
Travel back to July 2020, and it’s likely the cybercrime story you were reading about involved the compromise of more than 130 Twitter accounts. The reason it was such a big deal is that the accounts included those in the names of people such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Mush. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and more high-profile folks and companies. James Joseph O-Conner was ultimately sentenced to five years in the U.S. after agreeing to a plea deal for his part in the hacking crimes. The hack was part of a Bitcoin scam, using celebrity accounts to get people to send crypto on a promise of the supposed famous person or organization doubling the amount in a charitable, if unlikely, move. It is estimated that at the compromised tweets were viewed at least 350 million times.
