Washington (AFP)

A Briton was arrested in Spain on Wednesday at the request of the United States, which suspects him of having participated in the hacking of 130 Twitter accounts of personalities in July 2020, announced the United States Department of Justice.

Joseph O'Connor, 22, was indicted by federal justice for his role in this spectacular attack, which had targeted in particular the accounts of Joe Biden, then presidential candidate, billionaires Elon Musk or Bill Gates or the former President Barack Obama.

"In addition to the Twitter attack on July 15, 2020, O'Connor is indicted for computer intrusions relating to the takeover of TikTok and Snapchat accounts," as well as "online harassment of a minor victim" , specifies the ministry in a press release.

Last summer, the social network was the subject of a particularly embarrassing attack, given the visibility of the 130 hacked accounts.

An enticing message was displayed on 45 of them: "I have decided to help my community. All bitcoins sent to my address, below, will be doubled", could one read in particular under the profile of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ..

In most cases, these messages were quickly deleted, but according to the investigation, the scam would have allowed hackers to pocket more than $ 100,000 in cryptocurrency, via 400 transfers from gullible Internet users.

- PlugWalkJoe -

The attack had revived the debate on the security of social networks a few months before the presidential election and seriously damaged the credibility of the bird network.

Twitter had explained that the hackers had targeted a handful of employees via a phishing operation by phone in order to obtain several tools.

They had thus succeeded in passing the barrier of double authentication, which normally allows an account to be secured beyond a simple password.

In September, the network tightened the security of celebrity accounts.

In the meantime, justice had traced the route of bitcoins and quickly traced back to three young hackers: Graham Clark, an American then only 17 years old, Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old Briton, and Nima Fazeli, an American. 22 years old.

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After pleading guilty, the former, considered the mastermind of the attack, was sentenced in March to three years in prison.

The name of Briton Joseph O'Connor, better known under the pseudo PlugWalkJoe, was immediately mentioned by cybersecurity experts.

Contacted by the New York Times, the young man, a student in Spain, had denied any involvement.

"They can come to arrest me, I'll laugh at them. I haven't done anything wrong," he said in an interview published on July 17.

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