Spanish police arrest 22-year-old man for possible role in Twitter hack

Authorities have arrested a 22-year-old man for his alleged involvement in last year’s Twitter hack. In the process, several prominent Twitter accounts were taken over to promote a Bitcoin scam.

The US Department of Justice said in a press release that Spanish police arrested a British man in Estepona this week following a request for arrest from the United States. The man may have been involved in the Twitter hack that took place in July last year, in which the accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joe Biden and Apple, among others, were taken over. Those accounts then posted tweets urging users to transfer Bitcoins, promising that they would return twice as many Bitcoins.

In addition to his alleged role in the Twitter hack, the 22-year-old man is also suspected of hacking TikTok and Snapchat accounts. The man is also suspected of digitally stalking a minor victim, the US Department writes. The man is charged with ten counts, six of which are related to “attempts to gain unauthorized access to a protected computer”, two for cyberstalking, one for extortion and one for threat.

Several people were arrested for the Twitter hack last year, including a 17-year-old boy from Florida, who is said to have set up the attack and later pleaded guilty to 30 charges. The perpetrators would have gained access to Twitter’s internal systems through social engineering and thus took over the accounts, according to an investigation by the company.