As reported by local news earlier, during a video conference court hearing today involving 17-year-old Graham Clark, accused of hacking Twitter on July 15, other enterprising hackers  were able to get into the Zoom feed by posing as  CNN and BBC staffers, and then began playing a porn video during the live feed of the courtroom proceedings.

Well perhaps unsurprisingly the accused Twitter hacker-Bitcoin thief’s first (virtual) hearing was shut down within 25 minutes due to relentless Zoombombing. (It ended a minute after this when someone screenshared a Porn Hub video.) pic.twitter.com/fGiceq4WfN

— Jen Wieczner (@jenwieczner) August 5, 2020

[“Take a look” meant take a look at this story.  What did you think it meant?]

The hearing was to determine bail terms for Clark, who was arrested and charged on Saturday with having taken over Twitter accounts of prominent “Blue Checkmark” celebrities and then sending messages from the accounts of those individuals to victims, asking the victims to “match” donations made by the celebrity to certain causes.  The victims were directed to use Bitcoin to make the payments and to direct the payments to accounts controlled by Clark and his co-perpetrators.  Officials noted after his arrest that Bitcoin is particularly difficult to trace when it has been obtained by fraud.

Judge Christopher Nash adjourned the hearing for a period of time while the Court’s technical staff attempted to rid the feed of the pornographic entertainment.  When Judge Nash reconvened the hearing a short time later, more hackers broke into the feed and began transmitting rap music rather than the audio of the proceedings.

Kids these days.

According to one reporter, the Judge and his staff must have been novice Zoom users as they failed to use the Zoom settings which mute the attendees, nor did they prevent other attendees from taking over the screen, both of which are pretty basic level “organizer” controls used by whoever sets up the conference.

As I reported earlier, Clark is being prosecuted in state court in Florida because he is 17 years old.  Two co-perpetrators have been charged in federal court in San Francisco.

Because Clark has no prior criminal record, it would be very difficult to have him declared an “adult” in order to prosecute him in federal court.  Federal court does not prosecutor minors — mostly because the other agencies that assist federal court proceedings – like the US Marshal’s service and Bureau of Prisons — do not have facilities for holding minors either before or after trial.

A spokesperson for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida declined to comment on what had happened during the hearing and said the court was not able to share a recording of the hearing at this time.