Graham Ivan Clark, a 17-year-old from Florida, has been arrested in connection to the massive Twitter hack and Bitcoin scam that compromised several high-profile accounts. According to reports, Clark is believed to have been the “mastermind” behind the hack, according to TMZ.
After reportedly scamming $100,000 in Bitcoin, Clark has been hit with 30 felony charges.
Among the celebrity accounts that were hacked were President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and Kim Kardashian.
The celebrity accounts tweeted out a message asking users to send $1,000 in exchange for $2,000 that would be returned to the same address.
The State Attorney’s Office in Hillsborough County arrested Clark on Friday morning.
It is believed that Clark used a “spear-phishing attack” over the phone that led to him obtaining high-level administrative credentials that ultimately allowed Clark to target other Twitter employees before ultimately tweeting from the celebrity accounts.
As for how the hack was conducted, the New York Post writes:
The accounts were taken over with an internal Twitter tool that shows various details about the identity and status of user accounts, such as whether the email address has been confirmed and whether the account has been suspended, according to screenshots Motherboard published.
Moving forward, Twitter says it will limit access to the tool in an effort to stop and prevent another attack.
That is all the information that is available at this time. This article will be updated with new and relevant information should it become available at any time. If there is anything that we missed, please feel free to send an email to [email protected] and we will respond as soon as possible.
