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Graham Ivan Clark, the teenage hacker who authorities accused of being the mastermind behind the infamous Twitter Bitcoin hack last year, has pleaded guilty to 30 counts against him. As part of the deal, he agreed to serve a three-year prison sentence in a juvenile facility. According to The New York Times and Tampa Bay Times, he was classified as a “young offender” under Florida law, which allowed him to avoid the minimum 10-year sentence he would have imposed as an adult.
Clark was arrested in July 2020 when he was still 17, along with two other people, weeks after the Twitter hack took control of several high profile accounts. On July 15 of last year, some of the site’s most followed personalities and companies – including President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Uber, Apple, Kanye West and Jeff Bezos – tweeted that they were “giving back to the community” and would double any Bitcoin sent to a specific wallet. The attackers managed to get $ 117,000 in Bitcoin before the system was shut down.
After examining the security breach, Twitter reported that the perpetrators entered the compromised accounts through social engineering. They apparently targeted Twitter employees with access to internal systems and tools, which they then used to take control of highly visible accounts. These tools not only gave them the power to change account details and passwords, they also gave them access to account owners’ DMs. In fact, Twitter confirmed that the attackers exported data on “up to eight of the accounts involved.” NOW says Clark and his cohorts originally used their access to Twitter’s internal system to support accounts with one-word or unusual usernames, such as @dark, which they then sold on the OGUsers forum for thousands. They changed their tactics halfway and instead executed the Bitcoin scam.
According to a profile, the NOW published after his arrest, Clark was previously caught stealing Bitcoin from a Seattle-based tech investor in 2019, but was not arrested for being a minor. Clark returned all Bitcoins to his possession after his arrest and he agreed not to use computers without permission or supervision from law enforcement as part of the deal. He could serve part of his sentence in a military-style training camp, but he could also spend up to 10 years in adult prison if he breaks the terms of the agreement.
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