A 17-year-old boy, who is too young to be named, has today admitted to seven charges under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in connection with last year’s cyber-attack on TalkTalk’s website and the subsequent leaking of customer details. The case is being heard by the Norwich Youth Court.
The ISP was recently hit by a £400,000 fine as a result of the massive personal data breach (here), which occurred after a combined cyber-attack on their website harnessed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assault and an SQL Injection exploit in order to gain access to the provider’s database (here).
Since then various UK children and adults have been arrested in connection with the hack, not to mention several support agents in India who were working for TalkTalk through their outsourcing sub-contractor Wipro (here). However the Wipro incident is not directly related to the hacking cases.
Alex Mathews, EMEA Technical Manager of Positive Technologies, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“The fact a 17 year-old could be involved in a cyber-attack which wipes millions off a large company’s value is a stark reminder of the times.
Big companies simply must pay heed. This is another wakeup call to the fact there are young individuals hidden deep online who continually probe businesses for weakness through websites and other connected interfaces. Their motivations vary, but they are nothing if not persistent and creative in their attacks.
It is vital security teams stay one step ahead by continually monitoring for vulnerabilities and layering protection against this multitude of attacks.”
So far the only person to be formally charged and named with a related offence is 19-year-old Daniel Kelley from South Wales, who apparently attempted to extort 465 Bitcoins (at the time worth £216,000) from TalkTalk following the October 2015 attack (here). Overall Kelley is facing 14 charges, including eight of blackmail, four computer hacking offences and two fraud offences. TalkTalk informs that others have also been charged, although they were not yet able to share any details due to the on-going investigation.
Meanwhile the 17-year-old boy mentioned in today’s case, having already admitted the charges, is expected to be sentenced on 13th December 2016. All on the same day as the ISP announced their latest financial results, which has seen the provider turn a corner and return to more positive territory (here).
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