Is he a little genius or a budding crook? Maybe both.
US police arrested 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark as the mastermind of the massive Twitter hack in which the young hacker took over the accounts of celebrities and politicians like Barack Obama, Apple, Mike Bloomberg, Elon Musk , Bill Gates, Uber, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Wiz Khalifa, Kim Kardashian West, MrBeast, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Xxxtencion, Floyd Mayweather.
Hacked Twitter accounts asking the public to send Bitcoin BTC.
By hacking into the Twitter accounts of these well-known people, the hacker saw the FBI and many other investigators chasing him and ultimately arrest him.
Investigators clearly surprised to find a young 17-year-old high school student who just graduated from Florida in the United States, as reported by the New York Times.
The police therefore arrested Graham Ivan Clark in his Tampa apartment, he will have to answer for his acts of hacking and fraud before the American justice.
Two other people were also arrested for helping Graham Clark, Mason John Sheppard, 19, an Englishman, and another American, Nima Fazeli, 22.
If Clark is certainly a little computer genius, he mostly succeeded in gaining access to the accounts of these celebrities by simply convincing one of the Twitter employees that he was a colleague of his who needed his credentials to access the customer service portal.
He was able to take control of 130 Twitter accounts, including those of Barack Obama, Bill Gates and the other celebrities mentioned at the beginning of the article.
US officials say Clark’s inexperience and mistakes made it easy for investigators to identify the mastermind behind the hack that shocked the world.
Graham Clark was already known to the authorities, we learn that the US secret services had already seized 700,000 dollars in Bitcoin from him for reasons still unknown and not revealed by the authorities.
Florida Police said in a statement:
“This arrest sends a strong message to hackers that law enforcement will aggressively pursue these cases. FDLE is proud of the rapid investigative work of our agents and of our partnership with the FBI on this important matter. This arrest was not possible without the hard work of the state prosecutor’s office. We are grateful for their efforts in this matter.”
A Twitter hack which should therefore cost a lot for the budding hacker, the justice department may want to set an example, in order to discourage other hackers from attempting this kind of cybercrime which had in addition brought only a little amount of BTC in the end for those novice crooks.
A story that made people hear about Bitcoin around the world.
A Bitcoin price that has since risen well and is currently around $11,410.
