Draft:Pascal van den Essenburg

Pascal van den Essenburg (born March 24, 1989) is a Dutch hacker, software engineer and computer security consultant. He is best known for his successful attempt to hack a dutch bank, the ABN Amro, at the young age of 16 and his participation (2012 - 2016) in the infamous hacking group Anonymous under the alias ‘Twinkie’. Until this day he is still an active hacker.

Early career
Pascal made name in the hackers scene by hacking one of the largest banks in the Netherlands, the ABN Amro, being just 16 years old. After he succeeded the ABN Amro offered him a ethical hacking contract of €500.000,00.

Controversy
During his involvement with the action group Anonymous under the alias ‘Twinkie’ (2010 to 2017) and The hackers' collective Play (2019 to 2021), Pascal his identity was exposed by Anonymous because he questioned the management of the group since he didn’t want to cooperate in hacks against the Iranian government. After the exposure he was taken into custody by the AIVD for 2 weeks in 2017.

Personal Hacker
In 2016 Pascal was on the payroll for King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia being his personal IT consultant. In a television interview van den Essenburg has said that he only did IT work and hacking assignments for the office of King Salman and not for him personally. van den Essenburg was on the payroll of Desi Bouterse from early 2015 until 2017. In 2022 Pascal posted a message on his Twitter and Instagram profile with a picture of himself with Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai saying that he was going to work in the PMO of Dubai as an IT specialist. The messages were later removed after people started asking questions if his work for the Prime Minister had something to do with Prinses Latifa.

Consulting
Since 2014, van den Essenburg has been a paid security consultant for corporations and the governments of Sweden and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His company does security consulting for, performing penetration testing services, and teaching social engineering classes to companies and governments. His company the Nouveau Riche Group is based in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom.