A teenager who hacked the Twitter accounts of some of the most prominent figures in the world has been sentenced to three years in prison.
According to The Guardian, 18-year-old hacker Graham Ivan Clark, who hails from Florida, infiltrated a number of Twitter accounts of major celebrities and organizations on July 15, 2020.
Court documents report that the teenager managed to attain approximately $117,000 as a result of the scheme, which constituted a major and distressing security breach.
According to The Tampa Bay Times, other victims of Clark included the Twitter accounts of President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, Floyd Mayweather, Kim Kardashian, as well as the official accounts of a number of other corporations.
Clark then issued spam tweets from the above accounts, which read: "I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled!
"If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000. Only doing this for 30 minutes ... Enjoy! [sic]"
As a result of the mass account hijacking, Twitter engineers were forced to suspend all verified accounts from sending tweets for a number of hours while they worked to secure the platform.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that Clark, who was a 17-year-old Gaither High School senior when he committed the crimes, was arrested several days later. His stolen cryptocurrency was also returned to its owners.
Police investigators later determined that he had managed to access Twitter’s systems by convincing an employee he worked in the company’s information technology department, before breaking into the company’s customer service portal.
In a virtual court appearance from Hillsborough County jail on Tuesday, March 16, Clark pleaded guilty to state charges and agreed to accept a juvenile sentence. He will now serve time in a state prison designated for young adults.
The Times reports that Judge Christine Marlewski also barred Clark from using computers without permission and supervision from law enforcement, and ruled that he will have to submit to searches of his property and give up the passwords to any online accounts he controls in the future.
