Members of a group of young British computer hackers who masterminded sophisticated cyber attacks on major global institutions from their bedrooms have been jailed.
Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Ryan Cleary considered themselves to be “latter-day pirates” when they masterminded sophisticated cyber attacks on major global institutions, including the CIA, Sony, the FBI and Nintendo.
They were “hactivists” with the LulzSec collective, behind attacks which stole sensitive personal data including emails, online passwords and credit card details belonging to millions of people.
News International, the NHS and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) were also victims of the group, who lived as far apart as London and the Shetland Islands and never met in person.
Stolen information was posted unencrypted on their website and file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay in 2011, the court had previously heard.
They also carried out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, using linked networks of up to one million computers to overpower and crash websites. All had admitted offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Cleary, 21, of Wickford Essex, was jailed for two years and eight months, Ackroyd, 26, from Mexborough, South Yorkshire, for 30 months, Al-Bassam, 18, from Peckham, south London, was given 20 months suspended for two years, plus 300 hours of community work and Davis, 20, from Lerwick, Shetland, was ordered to serve 24 months in a young offenders’ unit.