Recall that on the night of July 16, a large-scale Twitter hack took place, during which control over 130 celebrity accounts was intercepted, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, as well as Apple and Uber.
As it turned out, the culprit was a 17-year-old teenager from Tampa, USA, who was arrested on July 31 and charged with 30 counts.
Regardless of his age, the teenager will be judged as an adult. Shortly after the hacker’s arrest, Twitter released a statement thanking law enforcement for their work:
We appreciate the promptness of law enforcement in this investigation and will continue to cooperate as the case progresses. For our part, we strive to be transparent and provide regular updates.
The most difficult thing for the investigators was tracking bitcoin transactions, as it, like other cryptocurrencies, is difficult to trace. The FBI and the US Department of Justice located the suspect after a "complex nationwide investigation," according to the state attorney’s office.
Twitter, in a report released the day before the arrest, said that a group of company employees were the victims of a phone phishing attack.
According to the company, the perpetrators set up a complex scam to "deceive certain employees and take advantage of human weaknesses to gain access to internal networks."
By “human weaknesses," Twitter representatives most likely mean bribery.
"In order to successfully carry out the attack, the attackers needed access to both our internal network and specific employee credentials, which gave them access to our internal support tools," Twitter said.
However, the attacked employees did not have access to such tools, so the hackers entered the corporate network through them, from where they received information about authorized employees.