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Authorities Reportedly Arrest Suspect Who Hacked CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter Account

The suspect, who not been identified because he is a minor, was allegedly part of The Chuckling Squad, a hacker group responsible for compromising Dorsey's account in August.

Authorities have reportedly arrested a person who is allegedly part of The Chuckling Squad, a group that hacked the Twitter account of CEO Jack Dorsey in August, Motherboard reports citing law enforcement and criminal sources. The website reports the arrest took place two weeks ago, according to one of the leaders of the hacker group, who goes by ‘Debug.’ The suspect, was not named by Motherboard because they are a minor. Debug told the site, the suspect was kicked out of the group in October. On Aug. 30, Dorsey's Twitter account began rapid-tweeting a series of offensive and incoherent content, including racial slurs, bomb threats, and retweeting antisemitic material, along with the hashtag #ChucklingSquad and linking to a Discord chat called “Chuckling Squad,” which was disabled 30 minutes later. Less than two hours after the incident, Twitter announced that the account was secure and none of the platform's systems were compromised.

Dorsey's account is of particular interest to hackers because he is a top executive of the platform and had 4.2 million followers at the time of the hacking. The Chuckling Squad allegedly used a technique called SIM-swapping, where hackers will trick a wireless provider like T-Mobile or Verizon into giving them control of a phone number to access the Twitter account through two-factor authentication SMS codes.