The Wall Street Journal recently outlined the allegations against a Tampa teenager accused of being the mastermind by a recent major Twitter hack and explains how the teen allegedly fooled Twitter’s employees.
In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal outlines how a Florida teenager allegedly convinced Twitter employee that he was a co-worker in order to gain access to Twitter tools that he used to hijack the accounts of prominent figures such as Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Joe Biden to promote a bitcoin scam that allegedly generated upwards of $100,000.
The Wall Street Journal writes:
The crucial moment in the worst hack in Twitter Inc.’s history sounded like something millions of Americans would find unremarkable. It was a call from the IT department. Or at least, it seemed to be.
In fact, the call was from a Florida teenager who convinced a Twitter employee that he was a co-worker, according to prosecutors, who revealed their case last week. The persuasion was a key leap forward during months of reconnaissance that ultimately granted the 17-year-old access to a host of Twitter accounts, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Kanye West, authorities allege.
Clark reportedly used his impersonation skills along with a technique called SIM-swapping, in which he convinced a phone carrier to assign an existing number to a new phone, to trick Twitter employees into giving him access to the platform’s private account tools.
Clark allegedly also set up fake phishing pages including one that resembled Twitter’s Okta login portal, which is a webpage used to securely log into company systems. Okta confirmed that its systems were not compromised during the hack. The WSJ notes that this isn’t the first time that Clark has been in trouble with authorities.
A user linked to Mr. Clark’s online accounts once described himself as “a full time crypto trader dropout” and said cryptocurrency was “pretty much my entire life.”
In an unrelated investigation, authorities searched Mr. Clark’s residence last August, seizing his computers and freezing approximately 300 bitcoin, or $3.4 million at Monday’s rates, in digital currency, according to Mr. Weisbrod, who declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. Mr. Clark paid 100 bitcoin to authorities to resolve the matter with no admission of wrongdoing, Mr. Weisbrod said.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com