July 2020 is a month remembered by the “good people” (and not so good) of Twitter for two reasons. First, the elephant in the room: it was the first summer we lived with a global pandemic for which, at that time, there was still no vaccine. Second, the social network experienced the largest hack in its history.
A few days ago, one of the perpetrators of the major Twitter hack was sentenced. Joseph James O’Connor, a 24-year-old British citizen, has been sentenced to 5 years in prison after pleading guilty a month ago to four charges of computer hacking, electronic fraud, and cyberstalking. According to Reuters, O’Connor also agreed to forfeit at least $794,000 to the victims of his crimes.
This young British citizen was arrested in Spain in 2021 and extradited to the United States in early 2023, where he has been detained ever since. While he was facing a possible sentence of 77 years, it is expected that O’Connor will serve only half of his 5-year sentence, as he has already spent 2 years in pretrial detention.
But how did the said hack take place? On July 15, 2020, dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts with millions of followers, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and even the current owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, began tweeting the same message: “I’m feeling generous because of COVID-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address in the next hour. Good luck, and stay safe out there!” (along with a cryptocurrency wallet address).
Yes, clearly it was a scam, but the tweets were coming from real and verified accounts (when verification meant something). What was happening? The hackers, using various techniques of phone-based social engineering, deceived several Twitter employees to gain access to Twitter’s internal network. Once inside, they utilized a tool within the company known as GodMode, which allows tweeting from any Twitter account, to spread their scam message.
A massive security breach that has since been resolved, but left a lasting impact on the memories of those affected (especially those who were scammed).
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