Graham Ivan Clark, the teen who had hacked into — and took control of — the Twitter accounts of Apple, Bill Gates, Joe Biden and several other famous personalities last year has been sentenced to 3 years in jail, as per a report by Tampa Bay Times. He pleaded guilty to the crime and was served the sentence; he also will spend the next 3 years after release in probation. Clark is 18 years old.
After getting past Twitter’s defences, Clark had taken control of aforementioned accounts to ask for more that $100,000 in Bitcoin. Besides Gates and Biden, Clark was also accused of hacking the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. As per the report, he’d amassed about $117,000 in Bitcoin through his several accounts before Twitter gained control of the accounts again. He was arrested some days later at his home in Hillsborough County.
How did he manage to take hold of someone else’s Twitter account?
Through Twitter’s customer service portal. He reportedly convinced a Twitter employee that he worked in the information technology department of the company and then accessed the customer service portal.
His was a virtual court hearing where the judge treated him as a “youthful offender”. That is the reason why his sentence is for 3 years. If he would have been treated as an adult, he would have been slapped with a 10-years prison sentence, says the report.