On Tuesday, US authorities questioned a Massachusetts teenager who appears to have played a significant role in the so-called “Twitter hack” that took place on July 15.
When authorities arrested Graham Ivan Clark, who they said was the "mastermind" of the recent Twitter hack that trapped Kanye West, Bill Gates and others, what stood out was his age: He was just 17 years old.
Now, authorities are investigating another individual who appears to have played an equal, if not more important, role in the July 15 attack — according to four people involved in the investigation who declined to be identified because the investigation is ongoing. They said the individual was partly responsible for planning the breach and executing some of its highly sensitive and complex elements .
The person's age: Just 16 years old.
On Tuesday, federal agents questioned the teenager and, with a search warrant, searched his home in Massachusetts where he lives with his parents.
The search warrant and other documents in the case are classified, and federal agents may not charge the young man with any criminal activity. If he is eventually arrested, the case is likely to be referred to Massachusetts authorities. (The New York Times is not reporting the teenager’s name because of his age and because he has not been arrested.)
It's rare for federal agents to investigate someone so young in a hacking case, especially given the apparent sophistication of the attack. The attackers gained control of the social network and compromised the accounts of Barack Obama, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Jeff Bezos and many other prominent people, revealing just how vulnerable Twitter could be.
Authorities have already charged three people in the case. As mentioned above, the mastermind behind the case is Mr. Clark, who was charged by Florida prosecutors with 30 felony counts. He has pleaded not guilty and has not posted bail to be released from jail. The other two are Mason John Sheppard, 19, of the United Kingdom, and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, Florida.
Investigators say the Massachusetts teenager appeared to be involved in planning the Twitter attack with Mr. Clark in May. “He was smarter than the rest of them,” said Joseph O’Connor, a hacker known as PlugWalkJoe. Mr. O’Connor said he had spoken to some of the people involved in the Twitter hack and was aware of the teenager’s role in the plan.
The young people's secure communications made it harder for investigators to track him down. But Mr. O'Connor, like others, said he made video calls to friends on the day of the breach and showed them he was inside Twitter's back-end systems
The teenager was known for calling employees of companies like Twitter. He would often pose as a contractor/employee to convince employees to enter their credentials on fake websites, a method known as voice phishing.
After the Twitter hack, the teenager became the focus of investigators because he continued to engage in voice phishing attacks, people involved in the investigation said.
At the age of 13, the boy purchased a series of websites with pornographic “names” and attempted to resell them using his personal address and email.
Also around that time, his email and IP address appeared on the website OGusers.com, which was the “home” of the other people involved in the Twitter hack. The site allows hackers to buy and sell coveted usernames from real-life “gangsters” on social media sites.
The teenager changed aliases very frequently, according to intelligence analysis conducted by the company Intel471. The messages he posted from his accounts included profanity and anti-Semitic and homophobic comments.
He later contacted Mr. Clark online and they began working together, people involved in the investigation. Their first collaboration, the hackers reported and investigators confirmed, was on so-called SIM swaps, a hacking method often used to steal social media accounts.
Late last year and early this year, hackers and researchers said the teenager was part of a group that hacked the website of GoDaddy, a company that registers domains and offers web hosting services.
In May, the Massachusetts teenager and Mr. Clark began tricking Twitter employees into giving up their login details, with their actions leading to the July 15 hack.
Information source: New York Times
