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Florida teen arrested, charged with being “mastermind” of Twitter hack


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Florida teen arrested, charged with being “mastermind” of Twitter hack

The 17-year-old is facing 30 felony fraud charges.

A Florida teen has been arrested and charged with 30 felony counts related to the high-profile hijacking of more than 100 Twitter accounts earlier this month.

 

Federal law enforcement arrested Graham Ivan Clark, 17, in Tampa earlier today, the Office of Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said. The arrest followed an investigation spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department.

 

"These crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they're not the primary victims here," said Warren. "This 'Bit-Con' was designed to steal money from regular Americans from all over the country, including here in Florida. This massive fraud was orchestrated right here in our backyard, and we will not stand for that."

 

A security researcher who has been actively working with the FBI on the investigation into this month's breach told Ars that the hack was the result of painstaking research into Twitter employees, the social engineering of them by phone, and carefully timed phishing.

 

Allison Nixon, chief research officer at security firm Unit 221B, said evidence collected to date shows that Clark and hackers he worked with started by scraping LinkedIn in search of Twitter employees who were likely to have access to the account tools. Using tools that LinkedIn makes available to recruiters, the attackers then obtained those employees’ cell phone numbers and other private contact information.

 

The attackers then called the employees, and directed them to a phishing page that mimicked an internal Twitter VPN. Detailed work histories and other employee data the attackers obtained from public sources allowed the attackers to pose as people who were authorized Twitter personnel. Work at home arrangements cause by the COVID-19 pandemic also prevented the employees from using using normal procedures such as face-to-face contact, to verify the identities of co-workers.

 

With the confidence of the targeted employees, the attackers directed them to a phishing page that mimicked an internal Twitter VPN. The attackers then obtained credentials as the targeted employees entered them. To bypass two-factor authentication protections Twitter has in place, the attackers entered the credentials into the real Twitter VPN portal within seconds of the employees entering them into the fake one. Once the employee entered the one-time password, the attackers were in.

 

According to the charging document (PDF), Clark faces one count of organized fraud, 11 total counts of fraudulent use of personal information, one count of accessing a computer or electronic device without authority, and 17 counts of communications fraud. Clark's prosecution is taking place in Tampa, where he lives, "because Florida law allows minors to be charged as adults in financial fraud cases such as this when appropriate," Warren's office said.

 

Two other young adults are also facing charges in relation to the hack, the DOJ announced. Mason Sheppard, a 19-year-old UK resident, and Nima Fazeli of Orlando, Florida, have both been charged in the Northern District of California.

 

Sheppard faces counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and intentionally accessing a protected computer. Fazeli is charged with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer.

 

This is a developing story and will be updated.

 

 

Florida teen arrested, charged with being “mastermind” of Twitter hack

 

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C.G.B. Spender

Why is it when a multimillion multinational company ignores security and employs people who can't distinguish phishing email/webpage from a real one and click on any and all email attachments "because I wanted to see what's inside" (I see this in office at work at daily basis) gets shown their shortcomings by a literal script kiddie, the fault absolutely never lies with the company. Sure, the kid committed crime I ain't disputing that, but will the twitter employees that got phished get fired? Will Twitter get fined for negligence in hiring process and for lax security and insufficient staff training? Hint: No. Similar as stories with police departments and other government offices using outdated hardware and uneducated staff getting hit by ransomware and somehow no part of the blame ever lies with them.

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Remember the Twitter accounts that got pwned, with a Bitcoin come-on?

Nation-state, right? These superhackers took over the Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Uber, Warren Buffet, and many others.

 

Looks like the mastermind is a world-renowned ace North Korean hacker… oh… wait a sec…

 

Here’s what an NBC affiliate in Tampa now says:

A Tampa teenager is in jail after being accused of hacking several high-profile Twitter accounts, according to the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office… 30 felony charges were filed against the 17-year-old this week for “scamming people across America” regarding the Twitter hack that happened on July 15.

Imagine what could have been.

 

 

Remember the Twitter accounts that got pwned, with a Bitcoin come-on?

 

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Three Charged in July 15 Twitter Compromise

Three individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the July 15 hack on Twitter, an incident that resulted in Twitter profiles for some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities, executives and public figures sending out tweets advertising a bitcoin scam.

 

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Twitter account on the afternoon of July 15.

Nima “Rolex” Fazeli, a 22-year-old from Orlando, Fla., was charged in a criminal complaint in Northern California with aiding and abetting intentional access to a protected computer.

 

Mason “Chaewon” Sheppard, a 19-year-old from Bognor Regis, U.K., also was charged in California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and unauthorized access to a computer.

 

A U.S. Justice Department statement on the matter does not name the third defendant charged in the case, saying juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the youth. But an NBC News affiliate in Tampa reported today that authorities had arrested 17-year-old Graham Clark as the alleged mastermind of the hack.

 

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17-year-old Graham Clark of Tampa, Fla. was among those charged in the July 15 Twitter hack. Image: Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Wfla.com said Clark was hit with 30 felony charges, including organized fraud, communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to a computer or electronic device without authority. Clark’s arrest report is available here (PDF). A statement from prosecutors in Florida says Clark will be charged as an adult.

 

On Thursday, Twitter released more details about how the hack went down, saying the intruders “targeted a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack,” that “relies on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems.”

 

By targeting specific Twitter employees, the perpetrators were able to gain access to internal Twitter tools. From there, Twitter said, the attackers targeted 130 Twitter accounts, tweeting from 45 of them, accessing the direct messages of 36 accounts, and downloading the Twitter data of seven.

 

Among the accounts compromised were democratic presidential candidate Joe BidenAmazon CEO Jeff BezosPresident Barack ObamaTesla CEO Elon Musk, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and investment mogul Warren Buffett.

 

The hacked Twitter accounts were made to send tweets suggesting they were giving away bitcoin, and that anyone who sent bitcoin to a specified account would be sent back double the amount they gave. All told, the bitcoin accounts associated with the scam received more than 400 transfers totaling more than $100,000.

 

Sheppard’s alleged alias Chaewon was mentioned twice in stories here since the July 15 incident. On July 16, KrebsOnSecurity wrote that just before the Twitter hack took place, a member of the social media account hacking forum OGUsers named Chaewon advertised they could change email address tied to any Twitter account for $250, and provide direct access to accounts for between $2,000 and $3,000 apiece.

 

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The OGUsers forum user “Chaewon” taking requests to modify the email address tied to any twitter account.

On July 17, The New York Times ran a story that featured interviews with several people involved in the attack, who told The Times they weren’t responsible for the Twitter bitcoin scam and had only brokered the purchase of accounts from the Twitter hacker — who they referred to only as “Kirk.”

 

One of the people interviewed by The Times used the alias “Ever So Anxious,” and said he was a 19-year from the U.K. In my follow-up story on July 22, it emerged that Ever So Anxious was in fact Chaewon.

 

The person who shared that information was the principal subject of my July 16 post, which followed clues from tweets sent from one of the accounts claimed during the Twitter compromise back to a 21-year-old from the U.K. who uses the nickname PlugWalkJoe.

 

That individual shared a series of screenshots showing he had been in communications with Chaewon/Ever So Anxious just prior to the Twitter hack, and had asked him to secure several desirable Twitter usernames from the Twitter hacker. He added that Chaewon/Ever So Anxious also was known as “Mason.”

 

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The negotiations over highly-prized Twitter usernames took place just prior to the hijacked celebrity accounts tweeting out bitcoin scams. PlugWalkJoe is pictured here chatting with Ever So Anxious/Chaewon/Mason using his Discord username “Beyond Insane.”

On July 22, KrebsOnSecurity interviewed Sheppard/Mason/Chaewon, who confirmed that PlugWalkJoe had indeed asked him to ask Kirk to change the profile picture and display name for a specific Twitter account on July 15. He acknowledged that while he did act as a “middleman” between Kirk and others seeking to claim desirable Twitter usernames, he had nothing to do with the hijacking of the VIP Twitter accounts for the bitcoin scam that same day.

 

“Encountering Kirk was the worst mistake I’ve ever made due to the fact it has put me in issues I had nothing to do with,” he said. “If I knew Kirk was going to do what he did, or if even from the start if I knew he was a hacker posing as a rep I would not have wanted to be a middleman.”

 

Another individual who told The Times he worked with Ever So Anxious/Chaewon/Mason in communicating with Kirk said he went by the nickname “lol.” On July 22, KrebsOnSecurity identified lol as a young man who went to high school in Danville, Calif.

 

Federal investigators did not mention lol by his nickname or his real name, but the charging document against Sheppard says that on July 21 federal agents executed a search warrant at a residence in Northern California to question a juvenile who assisted Kirk and Chaewon in selling access to Twitter accounts. According to that document, the juvenile and Chaewon had discussed turning themselves in to authorities after the Twitter hack became publicly known.

 

 

Three Charged in July 15 Twitter Compromise

 

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