Two hackers have been sent to prison for their roles in
hacking TalkTalk,
one of the biggest UK-based telecommunications company, in 2015 and
stealing personal information, banking, and credit card details
belonging to more than 156,000 customers.
Matthew Hanley, 23, and Connor Allsopp, 21, both from Tamworth in
Staffordshire, were sentenced Monday to 12 months and 8 months in
prison, respectively, after they admitted charges relating to the
massive breach that cost TalkTalk £77 million in losses.
The total cost also included the
massive £400,000 fine
imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on TalkTalk for
failings to implement the most basic security measures in order to
prevent the hack from happening.
At the Old Bailey, the judge Anuja Dhir described Hanley as a "dedicated
hacker" and sentenced him to 12 months in prison; whereas, Allsopp gets
8-months prison for his lesser role in the cyber attack.
The Judge also said that it was a tragedy to find "two individuals of such extraordinary talent," Daily Mail
reported.
"Given the scale of the attack, the number of people whose confidential
information was stolen and then passed on to others, I'm sure that your
actions caused misery and distress to many thousands of the customers of
TalkTalk," Dhir added.
Hanley broke into the company's website between October 16 and 21 in
2015 and stole personal and banking details of 156,959 customers. He
then passed the stolen information on to his friend Allsopp, who later
sold the data to another online user for fraud.
The stolen information included customers' full names, postal addresses,
dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses, and TalkTalk
accounts information, and in almost 16,000 cases, the attackers also
accessed financial information.
Another hacker, Daniel Kelley, 21, was arrested, charged and pledged
guilty in 2016, for obtaining the stolen data of TalkTalk customers and
blackmailing the company's then-CEO, Dido Harding, in an attempt to
extort 465 Bitcoins.
"Your actions, the actions of others, resulted in the then-CEO of
TalkTalk being subjected to repeated attempts to blackmail her for
money. You were not personally involved in making those attempts, but
your actions helped facilitate it," Judge Dhir told Hanley and Allsopp.
In the weeks following the TalkTalk breach, several teenagers, including a
15-year-old boy from Northern Ireland, a
16-year-old boy from west London, and
another 16-year-old from London, were arrested for their alleged role in hacking and blackmailing the telecom company.
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