Self-proclaimed "theocratic fascist" Matt Walsh — who has previously claimed that anime is "satanic" and that mermaids are scientifically incapable of being black — had his Twitter account hacked on Tuesday night. Wired journalist Dell Cameron reached out to the person behind the hack, and reported loose details on how the person managed to compromise nearly all of Walsh's accounts.
"The intent was to make funny tweets, as Matt Walsh likes to 'trigger' people," said Doomed, who declined to provide his real name. "We caused no financial harm, threatened anyone, [nor] ruined anything." It was merely, he says, "a few silly words on social media."
A pinned tweet on Walsh's profile, which was suspended a few hours after the hacks began, read: "My Pronouns Are That/N***a."
The hack was accomplished, Doomed says, using a technique known as SIM swapping. The attack typically involves hackers tricking a cellular provider into switching a victim's phone number to a SIM card the hackers control, rather than the one in the victim's phone. Doomed, however, claims Walsh's phone was compromised with the help of an "insider."
In addition to his Twitter account, Walsh's Google and Microsoft accounts appeared to have been compromised, granting Doomed unfettered access to the right-wing host's private emails.
By Wednesday, Cameron's own Twitter account was permanently banned from the service, allegedly for violating Twitter's terms of service by distributing hacked materials.
To be clear: neither Cameron nor Wired shared any of the actual materials obtained by the person who hacked Walsh. Rather, they reported that the hack had happened, and explained broadly how they were able to verify the hacker's claims. That's not the same as, say, posting illegally obtained photos of Hunter Biden's penis directly to Twitter. Yet inevitably, that will be the primary comparison point that leads the conversation — that Twitter wrongly suppressed the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, therefore it was perfectly fine that Elon Musk wrongly suppressed the story about Matt Walsh being hacked. Because that's how you make the world a better place: by drawing false parallels between events, and then repeating the same mistake over and over again in loosely-related situations.
The Hacker Who Hijacked Matt Walsh's Twitter Was Just 'Bored' [Dell Cameron / Wired]
Wired Journalist Banned From Twitter For Reporting On Hack Of Anti-Trans Activist Matt Walsh [Matt Novak / Forbes]
