A Twitter hacker who breached the accounts of celebrities including Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos has been forced to hand over £4million. Joseph James O’Connor, 26, was jailed in the US for the hacks which involved scamming people out of Bitcoin and threatening celebrities with the release of personal images and messages.
Now the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division has obtained a Civil Recovery Order to recover 42 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, that O’Connor made from the scheme, which holds the value of around £4.1m.
Read more…
Source: The Crown Prosecution Service
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Blackremote: Money Money Money – A Swedish Actor Peddles an Expensive New RAT
October 15, 2019
While researching prevalent commodity Remote Access Tools (RATs), Unit 42 researchers discovered a new, undocumented RAT in September, which had almost 50 samples observed in more than 2,200 attack sessions within the first month it was sold. In this report, we document the RAT manager/builder, client malware, and profile the Swedish actor behind this together ...
- Fin7 Cybergang Retools With New Malicious Code
October 11, 2019
The Fin7 cybercrime group has ramped up its offensive capabilities by adding new malicious code to its malware arsenal. Researchers said that this is evidence that Fin7 is still a growing threat despite the arrest of several Fin7 members in 2018. The notorious group has adopted a new dropper sample called Boostwrite, which uses new detection evasion ...
- macOS users targeted with new Tarmac malware
October 11, 2019
Security researchers have discovered a new piece of Mac malware; however, some of its purpose and full features will remain a mystery for a little longer. Named Tarmac (OSX/Tarmac), this new malware was distributed to macOS users via online malvertising (malicious ads) campaigns. These malicious ads ran rogue code inside a Mac user’s browser to redirect the ...
- FIN6 Compromised E-commerce Platform via Magecart to Inject Credit Card Skimmers Into Thousands of Online Shops
October 9, 2019
trend Micro discovered that the online credit card skimming attack known as Magecart or E-Skimming was actively operating on 3,126 online shops. Our data shows that the attack started on September 7, 2019. All of the impacted online shops are hosted on the cloud platform of the e-commerce service provider “Volusion,” one of the top e-commerce platforms in the market. ...
- The Value of Dark Web Coverage for Third-Party Risk Management
October 9, 2019
Everyone knows that a key ingredient to an effective third-party risk program is comprehensive, high-quality risk information. This includes details on supply chain risk, financial risk, legal risk, cyber risk, and more. With growing third-party ecosystems, it’s easier said than done for risk management teams to collect, organize, and prioritize their own risk information along ...
- Alabama Hospitals Pay Up in Ransomware Attack
October 7, 2019
An Alabama hospital system has paid its attackers in a ransomware attack that knocked its systems offline on Oct. 1. Officials at the DCH Health System didn’t say how much the hospitals paid for the decryption key, but noted that they have started a “methodical” process of system restoration. “We have been using our own DCH backup ...

