Back in 2020, the official Apple Twitter account was hacked and used as a way to scam Bitcoin. Now, the person behind the hack has been sentenced.
The teenager behind the hack, who is located in Florida, has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a three-year prison sentence. That’s according to a report today from the Tampa Bay Times. The teenager in question is 18 years old, and didn’t just compromise Apple’s Twitter account, but also the Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and others.
The sentence will allow the teenager, Graham Ivan Clark, to be deemed as a “youthful offender”, despite the age. Which means some parts of his sentencing will be different, per the designation.
From the report:
Paperwork filed Monday in Hillsborough circuit court indicates that Graham Ivan Clark has agreed to serve three years in prison, followed by three years probation.
The agreement will allow Clark, 18, to be sentenced as a ‘youthful offender.’ He may be eligible to serve some of his time in a military-style boot camp.
The hacking scheme brought in an estimated $100,000 in Bitcoin. Twitter ended up blocking each of the accounts that were compromised at the time, but not soon enough. During the hack, Clark was 17 years old, which played a part in the decision.
As for the hack itself? Interestingly, the original report notes that Clark was able to convince an employee at Twitter that he worked in the company’s I.T. department. After that, he was able to access Twitter’s customer service portal and illegally access the accounts mentioned above.