Two hackers involved in the TalkTalk hack sentenced to prison

Two men from Tamworth, Staffordshire were sentenced to prison for their roles in the 2015 TalkTalk hack.

Two men, Connor Allsopp, 21, and Matthew Hanley, 23, pleaded guilty to charges of hacking. Allsopp has been sentenced to 8 months in jail and Hanley to 12 months.

In October 2015, TalkTalk Telecom Group plc publicly disclosed that four million subscribers have been impacted by a “sustained cyberattack” that hit its servers. The figures were downgraded later, the company revealed that only 156,959 customers were affected.

Hackers accessed to names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses and phone numbers of the company customers, they also accessed financial data for 15,000 users.

Attackers also attempted to blackmail the telecoms TalkTalk CEO, Dido Harding.

“We have been contacted by, I don’t know whether it is an individual or a group purporting to be the hacker,” Dido Harding said to the BBC. “It is a live criminal investigation. All I can say is I have personally received a contact from someone purporting as I say…to be the hacker looking for money.”

The security breach had a significant impact on the company, overall losses have been estimated at £77 million ($99 million).

The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) handed a £400,000 ($510,000) record fine to TalkTalk for the data breach.

TalkTalk

Other people, were arrested after the TalkTalk security breach, most of them were youngsters.

In the weeks after the attack, the police arrested of a 15-year-old teen from Northern Ireland and a 16-year-old boy from Feltham.

In November 2015, another young hacker from Norwich was arrested by the British police.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – TA505, tRat)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.