By Tassilo Hummel and Marine Strauss PARIS (Reuters) -Belgium said on Thursday it would review potential health risks linked to

A British hacker behind the 2020 takeover of the Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and several other personalities as part of a Bitcoin scam has been sentenced to five years in prison. The hacker, 24-year-old Joseph O’Connor from Liverpool, took over nearly 130 accounts in July 2020, and pleaded guilty to charges of hacking these profiles last month. He was extradited from Spain on 26 April to face charges and now the US Attorney’s Office in the southern district of New York has sentenced him to five years for cyber crimes. In May, the hacker pled to four counts of computer hacking, wire fraud, and cyberstalking, according to Tech Crunch. The US justice department accused Mr O’Connor of participating in the exploitation of social media accounts, as well as online extortion and cyberstalking. The hacker, known as PlugwalkJoe online, has also been ordered to pay nearly $800,000 to the victims of his crimes. He had participated in the exploitation of social media accounts, as well as online extortion, using social engineering tricks to get access to Twitter accounts. New York’s Department of Financial Services investigated and found that the hackers had called Twitter employees, claiming to be the IT department. Another hacker Graham Ivan Clark – known as Kirk – reportedly used this access to hijack and reassign Twitter accounts. Using stolen accounts, hackers sent out tweets asking followers to send bitcoin to an account, promising to double their money. Mr O’Connor also pled guilty of using a cyber intrusion technique called a “SIM swap attack” to steal cryptocurrency from a Manhattan-based company and then to launder the proceeds of the scheme. In this mode of cyber attack, hackers gain control of a victim’s mobile phone number by linking that number to a SIM card controlled by the threat actors. This leads to the victim’s calls and messages being routed to a malicious unauthorised device controlled by the hackers, who then use control of the victim’s mobile phone number to obtain unauthorised access to accounts held by the victim registered to their mobile phone numbers. Twitter said it improved the social media platform’s cybersecurity controls following the cyberattack. In addition to the prison term, Mr O’Connor has been sentenced to three years of supervised release and further ordered to pay about $794,000 in forfeiture. Read More How bad is bitcoin for the environment really? Crypto experts discuss bitcoin price predictions What is Solana? The crypto rising 200-times faster than bitcoin Hacker reveals secret ‘Elon Mode’ in Tesla cars for full self-driving Hackers strike Iranian government, releasing presidential documents China calls hacking report 'far-fetched' and accuses the US of targeting the cybersecurity industry

The US and China, the world’s biggest polluters, vowed to step up joint action to tackle climate change

To get to Marcelo Mindlin’s desk in his downtown Buenos Aires office, guests must walk past a big

At least 100,000 people could have had their data compromised by a hack of contractors at the Department of Health and Human Services, a department official said Thursday, making it the latest US government agency to be caught up in a sweeping cyberattack connected to Russian cybercriminals.

Astronauts have never truly been alone. In 1988, on board the Russian space station Mir, the crew noticed something had blanketed one of their windows – from the outside. Whatever it was had even begun to infiltrate its way into the station, slowly destroying the window's titanium-quartz surface. The blanket was eventually revealed to be fungi that had managed to hitch a ride into space by clinging onto the astronauts themselves, Space.com reports. Amazingly, the fungi had managed to adapt to the space environment, surviving and thriving on windows, control panels, and air conditioners. The on board the space station even had their food and water contaminated. Although this was the first instance of a hijacker damaging the space station, it wasn't the last. Many space-borne fungi remain dormant during launch, until "activating" and reproducing to form thick, living mats on various regions in the space station. The fungi can threaten the health of those on board as well as damage electronics and plumbing. Since the 1988 incident, there have been numerous attempts to establish robust cleaning routines for scrubbing the fungi off walls and equipment, in an attempt to prevent the organisms from causing serious issues. Despite the concern surrounding the risks, scientists are trying to take advantage of the fungi's abilities. One team associated with the European Space Agency (ESA) recently conducted hypergravity experiments on fungi to better understand how these organisms survive effortlessly in the harsh environment of space. If these mechanisms are understood, fungi may be able to be used to build off-world settlements and be incorporated into off-world medications. In 2016, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California launched fungi into space for the first time on board the International Space Station. The team studied how the ISS environment caused the species to create certain molecules it doesn't produce on Earth. "We are never going to be able to get rid of fungi entirely as we venture into space, so we need to understand them," André Antunes, a researcher who is part of the recent ESA study, said in a statement published on Monday. In addition, they offer positive opportunities as well as risks. Down on Earth fungi are employed to make food - such as yeast for fermentation - as well as medicines, chemical enzymes for industry as well as metal nanoparticles used in numerous fields. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Pokimane said, 'Why would I compromise my morals and ethics for more money when I have money?'

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 25, 2023--

Alix Earle posted a photo of her outfit as she went shopping in Mykonos

Mozambique’s government approved a strategy to reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels that it estimates will cost

Canada is on track to miss its 2030 climate target largely due to delays in rolling out key

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON President Joe Biden on Monday said he plans to nominate attorney Anna Gomez for