The court hearing by videoconference against the Florida teenager accused of being the mastermind of the massive attack on Twitter was interrupted by porn videos and rap music, the US press reported Wednesday.
The Zoom hearing where the 17-year-old’s bail was being discussed was hacked and interrupted with screaming, music and even a pornographic video, the local Tampa Bay Times reported.
The young man, whose name AFP prefers to keep in reserve, has set a bond of $ 725,000, a figure that his lawyer tries to reduce.
But Wednesday’s interruptions were so frequent that Hillsborough Circuit Judge Christopher Nash had to temporarily suspend the hearing.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the judge restarted it shortly after, but the intruders continued to interrupt by identifying themselves with usernames such as “CNN” or “BBC.”
Finally, he refused to reduce the amount of the bond.
The young resident of Tampa, West Florida, had pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, after being arrested and charged Friday with wire fraud for the July 15 cyberattack.
Parallel to the arrest of the adolescent in Florida, two other young men, ages 19 and 22, were also detained.
Hackers first attacked a handful of employees of the social network through a “phishing” operation over the phone to obtain their credentials.
They then hacked 130 accounts, including those of former President Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and Amazon founders Jeff Bezos; Microsoft, Bill Gates; and Tesla, Elon Musk.
From those high profiles, they asked users to deposit bitcoins to accounts associated with the hackers, who thus managed to raise about $ 100,000 in that cryptocurrency.
