the hacker who claims to have compromised Twitter Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh’s account last night says he meant no harm, though he was clearly in a position to demand something. The entire purpose of the attack, he says, was to create controversy and wreak havoc on Twitter.
If that was all he was looking for, well, mission accomplished.
Walsh’s account first appeared compromised Tuesday night after a series of misplaced posts appeared on his feed. They included jabs at other conservative media figures, including fellow Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. In a tweet to Shapiro, the hacker, who goes by the alias Doomed, wrote: “You know what you did, you’re a closeted homosexual hiding behind being Jewish.”
Other tweets included “Joe Rogan is a pedophile” and “I can confirm that Andrew Tate kidnapped and raped those girls,” a reference to the former British boxer and controversial misogynist arrested in Romania last year on human trafficking allegations.
Walsh, who hosts a Daily Wire podcast named after him, has frequently been characterized as an “online troll”. He previously described himself as a “theocratic fascist”, he claims to believe that the anime is “Satanicand lobbied for state executions of doctors that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
Due to his efforts to foment attacks against the LGBTQ community online and in the media, denigrating trans people in particular as “coaches,” Walsh has most recently come under fire for a series of resurfaced comments referring to girls. as young as 16 as the “most fertile”.
“The intention was to make funny tweets, since Matt Walsh likes to ‘shoot’ people,” said Doomed, who declined to provide his real name. “We do not cause any financial damage, we threaten anyone, [nor] ruined anything. It was just, she says, “a few silly words on social media.”
A tweet pinned to Walsh’s profile, which was taken down a few hours after the attacks 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 cell phone provider into changing a victim’s phone number to a SIM card the hackers control, instead of the one in the victim’s phone. However, Doomed claims that 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, giving Doomed unrestricted access to the right-wing host’s private emails.
Several screenshots were provided as proof of the breach, including an apparent copy of Walsh’s W2 tax form, which lists his employer as Bentkey Services, LLC, the publisher of the Daily Wire. (Business records list Shapiro as a director of the company.) Other images include a Twitter direct message from Shapiro from 2017; emails between Walsh and conservative commentator Steven Crowder, host of the Stronger with Crowder podcast, dated March 2014; and a photo of Walsh holding a piece of paper dated November 2020, apparently used to authenticate some kind of attached message.