Security News > 2021 > March > 18-Year-Old Hacker Gets 3 Years in Prison for Massive Twitter 'Bitcoin Scam' Hack

A Florida teen accused of masterminding the hacks of several high-profile Twitter accounts last summer as part of a widespread cryptocurrency scam pled guilty to fraud charges in exchange for a three-year prison sentence.

On July 15, 2020, Twitter suffered one of the biggest security lapses in its history after the attackers managed to hijack nearly 130 high-profile Twitter accounts pertaining to politicians, celebrities, and musicians, including that of Barack Obama, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Uber, and Apple.

Subsequent investigation into the incident revealed that Clark and the other attackers seized the accounts after stealing Twitter employees' credentials through a successful phone spear-phishing attack, subsequently using them to gain access to the company's internal network and account support tools, change user account settings, and take over control.

"By obtaining employee credentials, they were able to target specific employees who had access to our account support tools. They then targeted 130 Twitter accounts - Tweeting from 45, accessing the DM inbox of 36, and downloading the Twitter Data of 7," the company said on July 31.

The three individuals attempted to monetize this entrenched access by selling the hijacked accounts on OGUsers, a forum notorious for peddling access to social media and other online accounts.

In light of the hacks, Twitter said it's making security improvements aimed at detecting and preventing inappropriate access to its internal systems, which were used by more than 1,000 employees and contractors as of early 2020.

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