Federal prosecutors have charged a previously convicted hacker with illegally accessing millions of records sent by Twitter users requesting technical support. The allegations shed new light into the hijacking of Burger King's Twitter account 17 months ago, a case many assumed had gone cold.
Cameron Lacroix, a 25-year-old resident of New Bedford, Massachusetts, agreed last month to plead guilty to a hacking spree that targeted computer networks around the country, some belonging to law enforcement organizations that stored sensitive data. He was also reportedly one of several hackers to steal racy pictures stored on Paris Hilton's poorly secured cell phone in 2005.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in San Francisco alleged that from February 16 to 19 in 2013, Lacroix hacked into Zendesk, a provider of customer support services, and used his illegal access to download millions of records belonging to Twitter, one of the many companies that used Zendesk. The support tickets included users' e-mail addresses and contact information. He then used the information to breach at least two high-profile Twitter accounts, according to charging papers filed in US District Court in San Francisco. Prosecutors wrote:
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I don’t know if you’re the sort of person who wakes up in the morning, and the first thing you long for is a McDonalds’ breakfast – but if you are, you might just be exactly what malware authors are looking for.
