Twitter Hackers now in custody

August 19, 2020
twitter hackers arrested social media monitoring phishing anti phishing spear-phishing attack

With the sensationalized successful hacking with Twitter recently, the US Department of Justice, and other Law Enforcement Authority, did not waste time to uncover the identity of the hackers. Due to the enforcers’ intensified effort, they were able to track down these adversaries behind the attack and able press charges for their committed crime.

According to the report, the ruckus on Twitter was staged by 3 individuals. This includes a 17-year old in which the authorities claimed to be its prime organizer.  The alleged perpetrators were named Mason Sheppard (Chaewon – 19 years old) from the United Kingdom, Nima Fazeli (Rolex – 22 years old) from Florida, and Graham Clark, 17 years old, which is also from Florida. All three suspects are now in the custody of the law enforcement and will face the trials for the pressed charges for their alleged act of malicious activity. Let alone that Clark will face 30 counts of misdeed for communications and cyber fraud.

Based on the initial investigation, authorities have instigated that the attack was made by an internal employee that has acquired elevated access to some essential tools of Twitter by which the reported 130 accounts have been compromised. However, with in-depth analysis, cybersecurity experts that scrutinized the pieces of evidence submitted confirmed that the infiltration was not done internally but more of a spear-phishing penetration to targeted Twitter employees utilizing people’s weakness or perception, reaction, and fear. Upon getting a foothold on these weaknesses, they were to infiltrate the Twitter system until getting elevated access to its network down to the compromised accounts. Twitter officially announced that it is working now in restoring the stronghold of their security, and getting support for the app is expected to have some delays.

Accounts that have been compromised includes prominent names in businesses, governments, and celebrities. These perpetrators send out tweets to their victims asking for money and, in return, a promise of doubling it as a sort of Give-Back for a cause. Aside from these personalities, they also attacked profiles linked to cryptocurrency that includes CoinDesk, Gemini, Bitcoin, and other similar accounts. It was believed that the attackers summed-up more than USD 100,000 within a few hours after sending the fraud tweets.

 

This immediate response and action of authorities and Twitter only showcase that cybercrime actors cannot stay anonymously forever.

 

Law Enforcement and Cybercrime experts will always be on the lookout and will keep up with the latest technology to bring this hideous actor to face the grip of justice for their crime.

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