It feels a little bit like hacker Groundhog Day. After hijacking a Westboro Baptist Church leader’s Twitter account on Monday, Wired has confirmed that the 15-year-old hacker known as Cosmo the God took over another account belonging to one of the of the same church members on Wednesday, using much the same method.
A source with direct knowledge of the attack who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to Wired that Cosmo had in fact taken possession of Fred Phelps Jr.’s Twitter account. Phelps Jr. is the son of church leader Fred Phelps Sr. Cosmo took over the @WBCFredJR Twitter account via Phelps’ Hotmail account, which he gained entry to by forwarding the password-reset phone number on the Hotmail account to the phone number he controlled, according to Wired’s source.
Previously, Cosmo had control of church spokesperson and attorney Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper’s @DearShirley Twitter account for about 24 hours before the account was suspended. During that time, Wired’s source also claims that Cosmo remotely recorded gay porn to her DVR, before canceling her internet service.
Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for picketing funerals of American soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last week the organization apparently announced its intention to protest at the funerals of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Following the church’s announcement, the hacker collective Anonymous and others have targeted WBC members online, especially in ways that affect their ability to communicate and operate.
Cosmo and his group UG Nazi took part in many of the highest-profile hacking incidents of 2012, including taking down websites for NASDAQ, CIA.gov, and UFC.com, redirecting 4Chan’s DNS to point to its own Twitter feed, and defeating CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince’s Google two-step authentication. He was arrested in June, as part of a multi-state FBI sting and was recently sentenced to probation until his 21st birthday, during which time he is prohibited from using the internet without supervision and prior consent.
Clearly, the account takeovers in the past few days would violate those terms.
Cosmo Strikes Again, Taking Over Another Westboro Twitter Account
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Cosmo Strikes Again, Taking Over Another Westboro Twitter Account
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Cosmo Strikes Again, Taking Over Another Westboro Twitter Account
