Graham Ivan Clark, the teenage hacker who accused authorities of being the mastermind behind the infamous Twitter Bitcoin hack last year, pleaded guilty to 30 charges against him. As part of the agreement, he agreed to serve three years in a juvenile facility. According to The New York Times and Tampa Bay Times, he was classified under Florida law as a ‘juvenile offender’, allowing him to avoid the minimum sentence of ten years he would receive as an adult.
Clark was arrested in July 2020 when he was still 17 years old, along with two other individuals, a few weeks after the Twitter hack that took over several high-profile accounts took place. On July 15 last year, some of the most-followed personalities and companies on the site – including President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Uber, Apple, Kanye West and Jeff Bezos – tweeted that they were ‘giving back’ to the community “and would double any Bitcoin sent to a specific wallet. The attackers managed to get $ 117,000 into Bitcoin before closing the scheme.
After investigating the security breach, Twitter announced that the perpetrators were being compromised through social engineering. They apparently targeted Twitter employees with access to internal systems and tools, which they then used to take control of many visible accounts. However, these tools not only gave them the power to change account details and passwords, but also gave them access to the account owners’ DMs. In fact, Twitter confirmed that the attackers carried out the data on ‘up to eight of the relevant accounts’. NEW says Clark and his groups originally used their access to Twitter’s internal system to take over one-word or unusual usernames, such as @dark, which they then sold to thousands on the OGUsers forum. They switched halfway tactics and instead executed the Bitcoin scam.
According to a profile, the NEW Clark, who was released after his arrest, was caught in 2019 stealing Bitcoins from a technical investor in Seattle, but was not arrested because he was a minor. Clark transferred all the Bitcoins in his possession after his arrest, and he agreed not to use computers without the permission or supervision of law enforcement as part of the agreement. He could serve some of his sentence in a military start-up camp, but he could also serve up to ten years in adult prison if he violates the terms of the agreement.