Friends jailed over huge cyber attack that cost TalkTalk £77m
TWO young computer geeks were jailed yesterday for masterminding a catastrophic data hack that cost TalkTalk £77million.
Connor Allsopp and Matthew Hanley caused misery for thousands when they brought the mobile phone network to its knees.
They were at the centre of a plot to steal sensitive customer data including banking details. Although it was one of the biggest data breaches in history, Hanley was jailed for just 12 months and Allsopp for eight at the Old Bailey yesterday.
The breach began in October 2015 when hackers discovered weaknesses in how TalkTalk stored sensitive customer information. The alarm was sounded when former TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding received a blackmail demand for more than £285,000 paid in Bitcoins in exchange for a huge cache of stolen data.
Some 1,707 tables with 439,365,020 rows of data, more than 1.6million of which were sensitive, were taken by hackers.
Peter Ratliff, prosecuting, called Hanley, 23, a ‘determined and dedicated hacker’ who was ‘entirely aware of the risks he was taking’. Hanley supplied material which allowed others to steal the information and use it for fraud. He passed a computer file containing personal data to Allsopp, 21, before it was given to another hacker known as ‘Reign’. The only evidence against Hanley came from Skype conversations because he wiped his computer files clean before he was arrested.
When officers came to his house to arrest him he was in bed, and told them: ‘I know who did it.’ His barrister Darron Whitehead said he ‘joined the party’ of up to ten hackers and ‘the majority of his actions were to gain respect among his peers.’ He said the hacker dropped out of school aged 15, was ‘socially inept’ and unable to leave the house, adding: ‘He wasn’t as good as he thought he was.’
The laptop Allsopp used has never been recovered. His barrister said he was immature and would not ‘adapt well’ to being in prison. Hanley and Allsopp admitted fraud and offences under the Computer Misuse Act.
Jailing the pair, both from Tamworth, Staffordshire, Judge Anuja Dhir said: ‘I am sure your actions caused misery and distress to many thousands of customers at TalkTalk. Illegal activities on this scale are not a game.’
TalkTalk was fined a record £400,000 for ‘car crash’ security failings which led to the crime.