Joseph James O’Connor, a 23-year-old British man, has admitted his involvement in hacking schemes focusing on high-profile Twitter accounts, together with these of Barack Obama and Elon Musk.
O’Connor was extradited from Spain on April 26 after being arrested almost two years in the past. He pleaded responsible in a New York courtroom earlier this week.
Learn extra on this case right here: US Indicts Brit Over SIM Swap Crypto Theft
Along with the Twitter breaches, O’Connor’s hacking group used SIM card swaps to realize entry to varied social media accounts, together with these belonging to TikTok star Addison Rae and actress Bella Thorne, with the intention of exposing their personal data. The group additionally used this methodology to steal $794,000 value of digital foreign money from a cryptocurrency firm in New York.
Generally known as “PlugwalkJoe” on-line, the British man now faces expenses of pc intrusion, extortion, stalking, wire fraud and cash laundering, which carry a most sentence of 20 years in jail.
“Contemplating the amount of cybercrime that’s affecting organizations and people, that is only a small step in the proper path,” Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber, instructed Infosecurity in an e mail.
In line with the safety skilled, whereas the conviction could also be a slight deterrent to informal criminals in Western international locations, it is going to be minor at finest and can do nothing to discourage cyber-criminals in international locations that aren’t pleasant to the West.
“Whereas these felony prosecutions do must occur, they don’t handle the foundation issues that allow these felony actions,” Parkin added. “It’s significantly better to place assets into stopping the incident (higher cybersecurity) than into cleansing up after the actual fact (investigation and prosecution).”
The conviction comes a few months after a bunch of UK regulation enforcers introduced that they efficiently broke up a major cash laundering operation, with the ultimate three members of the gang being sentenced in March.
Editorial picture credit score: max.ku / Shutterstock.com
