UK Court Orders Hacker to Surrender £4.1M Crypto from Twitter Hack

A British hacker behind a massive 2020 breach of Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile figures has been ordered by a UK court to surrender cryptocurrency assets now valued at more than 4 million pounds, a sharp increase from their worth at the time of the crime.

Joseph James O'Connor, 26, orchestrated the July 2020 attack that compromised over 130 verified accounts on the platform, then known as Twitter and now called X. The victims included former U.S. President Barack Obama, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett, rapper Kanye West, reality star Kim Kardashian and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among other celebrities, executives and brands. Hackers gained access through social engineering tactics, including SIM swapping and exploitation of internal administrative tools, to hijack the accounts and post fraudulent messages.

Those tweets urged followers to send Bitcoin to specified addresses with promises of receiving double the amount in return, often framed as charitable donations related to COVID-19 relief. The scam netted approximately 794,000 dollars in...