Three have been charged in connection with the Twitter attack that occurred two weeks ago.<\/b>
\nOn July 15th, the Twitter accounts of some big-name celebrities and companies were hacked including Elon Musk, Kanye West, Joe Biden, Bill Gates and Apple. It was later reported by Twitter that 130 total accounts were targeted, and tweets were sent out from 45 of those accounts in connection with a Bitcoin scam that garnered the culprits around $120,000. Clark is being charged with 30 felony counts including wire fraud, communications fraud, and hacking. The most serious charges carry with them a $250,000 fine. \u201cThese crimes were perpetrated using the names of famous people and celebrities, but they\u2019re not the primary victims here,\u201d said Hillsborough State Attorney Warren said. \u201cThis Bitcoin 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.\u201d \u201cThis could have had a massive, massive amount of money stolen from people, it could have destabilized financial markets within America and across the globe; because he had access to powerful politicians\u2019 Twitter accounts, he could have undermined politics as well as international diplomacy,\u201d Warred added. Apprehending the culprits was a joint effort that involved the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, FBI, IRS, Secret Service and Florida law enforcement officials. For its part, Twitter provided more detail today in an update to its running blog regarding the hack. \u201cThe social engineering [targeted] a small number of employees through a phone spear phishing attack. A successful attack required the attackers to obtain access to both our internal network as well as specific employee credentials that granted them access to our internal support tools. \u201cNot all of the employees that were initially targeted had permissions to use account management tools, but the attackers used their credentials to access our internal systems and gain information about our processes. This knowledge then enabled them to target additional employees who did have access to our account support tools.\u201d In the wake of this embarrassing security incident, Twitter says that it has \u201csignificantly limited access\u201d to its internal tools and has invested in \u201cincreased security protocols, techniques and mechanisms.\u201d<\/p>\n