He didn’t respond to messages seeking comment in recent days.īoth were trusted brokers on the site for buying and selling user accounts on various platforms, according to charging documents and Mr. Sheppard conducted with The Wall Street Journal just days after the hack.
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Sheppard, who lives with his mother in the British coastal town of Bognor Regis, according to an interview Mr. In mid-July, a longtime middleman on the site for buying and selling who used the handle “lol” reached out to Mr. The site describes itself as “a community driven digital marketplace that connects buyers and sellers from all around.” OGUsers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Since its launch in 2017, OGUsers has emerged as a marketplace where members buy and sell software, cheat codes for videogames and an unusual but highly coveted online asset-cool-sounding and hard-to-obtain usernames on gaming and social-media services.Īn example would be a one-letter account, or an account such as the kind of account that could only have been registered by an early user of the service-an “OG,” a slang term for “original gangster.” Some of these OG accounts are inactive, but others are stolen from active users.īarack Obama's Twitter page after it was hacked on July 15. Weisbrod said.Īt the center of the Twitter hack was an online forum known as. Clark paid 100 bitcoin to authorities to resolve the matter with no admission of wrongdoing, Mr. Weisbrod, who declined to comment on the nature of the investigation. Clark’s residence last August, seizing his computers and freezing approximately 300 bitcoin, or $3.4 million at Monday’s rates, in digital currency, according to Mr. In an unrelated investigation, authorities searched Mr. Photos: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images, Sean Gallup/Getty Images and Dado Ruvic/Reuters WSJ’s Euirim Choi reports on the hack, which looks different from other security breaches. High-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Barack Obama and Elon Musk, were the target of a widespread attack that security experts are calling the worst hacking incident in the company's recent history. Clark allowed some associates to sell access to Twitter accounts, including 17 from famous individuals and companies to promote a bitcoin scam that earned about $117,000, prosecutors say. Security professionals and law-enforcement officials believe the hack could have been far more damaging than it was, such as if the perpetrators had used the hacked accounts to release false news claiming to be from corporations. “There is no line that these people won’t cross,” she said. The most aggressive of these hackers take online harassment to extraordinary lengths, such as telling police that a hostage situation is under way at the home of an enemy so a SWAT team will be called in, or hacking phones and blackmailing users with nude photos. While the bulk of account-takeover activity flies under the radar, it has morphed in recent years into something more sinister, said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at cyber services company Unit 221b. And now, it has captured the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and local law enforcement.
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Over the past five years, the activity has mushroomed into an online threat that has affected thousands of victims and led to tens of millions of dollars in losses, according to security researchers and investigators.
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The practitioners cut their teeth in the antics of online gaming, where stealing one another’s Xbox or PlayStation gaming accounts is counted as a harmless prank, according to investigators and security experts. Clark allegedly used have been honed in recent years with remarkable tenacity by a community of teenagers and young adults. Fazeli’s lawyer didn’t return messages seeking comment. Sheppard was 19 when he was charged Friday. Two others were also charged-Ģ2, of Orlando, Fla.-in connection with the hack. Clark allegedly received money in a scam. He was charged with compromising more than 100 social media accounts and scamming both the Twitter account holders, and the approximately 400 people from whom Mr. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office/Reuters