$794K SIM change hacker PlugwalkJoe sentenced to 5 years in jail

3:26 am
June 25, 2023
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British Hacker Joseph O’Connor, additionally identified on-line as PlugwalkJoe, has been sentenced to 5 years in U.S. jail for his function in stealing $794,000 value of cryptocurrency by way of a SIM change assault on a crypto trade govt again in April 2019.

O’Connor used to be to start with arrested in Spain in July 2021 and used to be extradited to the U.S. on April 26, 2023. In May he pled to blame to a slew of fees when it comes to conspiracy to dedicate pc intrusions, conspiracy to dedicate twine fraud, and conspiracy to dedicate funds laundering, to call a couple of.

The jail sentence used to be highlighted in a June 23 remark from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York.

“In addition to the prison term, O’Connor was sentenced to three years of supervised release. O’Connor was further ordered to pay $794,012.64 in forfeiture,” the remark reads.

The hacked crypto exec has no longer been named, then again after SIM swapping them, O’Connor won unauthorized get entry to to accounts and computing programs belonging to the trade that the exec labored at.

“After stealing and fraudulently diverting the stolen cryptocurrency, O’Connor and his co-conspirators laundered it through dozens of transfers and transactions and exchanged some of it for Bitcoin using cryptocurrency exchange services.”

“Ultimately, a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency was deposited into a cryptocurrency exchange account controlled by O’Connor,” the remark provides.

O’Connor’s sentence additionally covers offenses when it comes to the foremost Twitter hack of July 2020, which in the end fetched him and his group round $120,000 value of ill-gotten crypto good points.

The hackers deployed a chain of “social engineering techniques” and SIM-swapping assaults to hijack round 130 outstanding Twitter accounts, in conjunction with two huge accounts on TikTok and Snapchat.

“In some instances, the co-conspirators took control themselves and used that control to launch a scheme to defraud other Twitter users. In other instances, the co-conspirators sold access to Twitter accounts to others,” the remark reads.

As a part of this scheme, O’Connor tried to blackmail the Snapchat sufferer via threatening to publicly free up non-public messages in the event that they didn’t make posts selling O’Connor’s on-line personality.

Additionally, O’Connor additionally “stalked and threatened” a sufferer, and “orchestrated a series of swatting attacks” on them via falsely reporting emergencies to government.

SIM swaps are nonetheless a large factor

A SIM change assault comes to a foul actor taking keep an eye on of a sufferer’s telephone quantity via linking it to any other sim card managed via them.

As a end result, the dangerous actors can then re-route the sufferer’s calls and messages to a tool managed via them, and achieve get entry to to any accounts the sufferer makes use of SMS-based two-factor authentication on.

The scheme is usually used to dupe fans of outstanding accounts into clicking phishing hyperlinks that in the end finally end up swiping their crypto belongings.

Related: Darknet hackers are promoting crypto accounts for as little as $30 a pop

Despite O’Connor’s antics happening more or less 3 years in the past, SIM swapping assaults proceed to be a major problem within the crypto sector.

Earlier this month blockchain sleuth ZachXBT known a gaggle of scammers that SIM-swapped no less than 8 accounts belonging to well known figures in crypto, together with Pudgy Penguins founder Cole Villemain, DJ and NFT collector Steve Aoki and Bitcoin Magazine editor Pete Rizzo.

According to ZachXBT, the crowd stole virtually $1 million via selling phishing hyperlinks from the hacked accounts.

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