Category Archives: Twitter hack

U.K. Cyber Thug “PlugwalkJoe” Gets 5 Years in Prison

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Joseph James “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor, a 24-year-old from the United Kingdom who earned his 15 minutes of fame by participating in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. That may seem like harsh punishment for a brief and very public cyber joy ride. But O’Connor also pleaded guilty in a separate investigation involving a years-long spree of cyberstalking and cryptocurrency theft enabled by “SIM swapping,” a crime wherein fraudsters trick a mobile provider into diverting a customer’s phone calls and text messages to a device they control. Continue reading U.K. Cyber Thug “PlugwalkJoe” Gets 5 Years in Prison→

The Original APT: Advanced Persistent Teenagers

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Many organizations are already struggling to combat cybersecurity threats from ransomware purveyors and state-sponsored hacking groups, both of which tend to take days or weeks to pivot from an opportunistic malware infection to a full blown data breach. But few organizations have a playbook for responding to the kinds of virtual “smash and grab” attacks we’ve seen recently from LAPSUS$, a juvenile data extortion group whose short-lived, low-tech and remarkably effective tactics are putting some of the world’s biggest corporations on edge. Continue reading The Original APT: Advanced Persistent Teenagers→

PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk

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One day after last summer’s mass-hack of Twitter, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that 22-year-old British citizen Joseph “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor appeared to have been involved in the incident. When the Justice Department last week announced O’Connor’s arrest and indictment, his alleged role in the Twitter compromise was well covered in the media.

But most of the coverage so far seem to have overlooked the far more sinister criminal charges in the indictment, which involve an underground scene wherein young men turn to extortion, sextortion, SIM swapping, death threats and physical attacks — all in a bid to seize control over highly-prized social media accounts. Continue reading PlugwalkJoe Does the Perp Walk→

Twitter Hack—Old Dog, New Tricks

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The recent Twitter breach involving Bitcoin transfer scams is not a new concept. SlashNext’s Threat Lab sees dozens of phishing sites each day because cybercriminals see it as an easy way to make money. Here are a few examples.
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