The hack took place on July 15th, 2020, and it quickly became one of the most fraught cybersecurity incidents in Twitter’s history, as accounts belonging to high-profile users like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were compromised in quick succession to promote a bitcoin scam Clark used to accept more than $100,000 in the cryptocurrency.
How Clark pulled off the hack, which he did alongside two other collaborators he allegedly met on an online username-selling forum called OGusers, has been the subject of numerous reports that detailed the group’s use of internal Twitter tools. Those tools, which can be used to reset account email addresses, allowed Clark and his collaborators to assume control of the accounts and send out tweets soliciting the public for bitcoin.