Connor Allsopp, pictured, and his co-accused Matthew Hanley admitted being behind a plot to steal the personal and banking details of thousands of customers of telecom giant TalkTalk
Two computer geeks hacked the website of telecoms giant TalkTalk in a massive data breach costing the company £77m in lost business, a court heard.
Connor Allsopp, 21, and Matthew Hanley, 23, were behind the plot to steal thousands of customers’ personal and banking details in October 2015.
TalkTalk was fined a record £400,000 for security failings which allowed the data to be accessed ‘with ease’ in one of the biggest data breaches in history.
Peter Ratliff, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey: ‘Matthew Hanley was, up until his arrest on 31 October 2015, a determined and dedicated hacker.
‘He was entirely aware of the risks he was taking and the illegality of what he was doing.
‘The counts against him reflect his actual hacking of TalkTalk, his obtaining of computer files that were to be used for hacking, his supplying of computer files to others to enable them to hack and his supply of material – the personal and financial data of TalkTalk customers – to another for the purposes of fraud.’
Mr Ratliff explained that Hanley gave Allsopp a computer file containing the personal data of TalkTalk customers and Allsopp then passed it on to an online user known as ‘Reign’.
Before Hanley was arrested, he erased the content of his computer and police were unable to restore it.
‘The evidence against him comes, in the main, from the material stored on his computer after he wiped it, and from Skype conversations he held with numerous online users,’ said Mr Ratliff.
The laptop which Allsopp was using at the time of the offences has never been recovered. He claims it was destroyed in a house fire.
In one of his Hanley’s online conversations with a user called ‘Simplyediting’, he boasted: ‘I’m dumping the TalkTalk ISP database haha’.
‘Dumping’ means exporting hacked information to a file on the hacker’s device.
When officers came to Hanley’s house to arrest him he was in bed, and told them: ‘I know who did it. It wasn’t the 15-year-old kid. They used his servers but it wasn’t him’.
The majority of the hacking took place between October 16 and 21, 2015, the Old Bailey heard.
TalkTalk became aware of ‘potential latency issues’ on its website and began an investigation on 21 October.
CEO of the company, Dido Harding, then received demands for Bitcoins in return for the stolen data, which included customers’ names, email addresses, mobile numbers, home addresses and dates of birth.
It is believed that 1,707 tables with 439,365,020 rows of data – 1,662,367 of which contained sensitive date – were taken by the hackers.
‘The total loss to TalkTalk as a result of the attack, as estimated by TalkTalk’s Chief Financial Officer, is £77million,’ said Mr Ratliff.
Allsopp has admitted supplying an article for use in fraud and supplying articles for use in a Computer Misuse Act 1990 offence
Hanley, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, admitted supplying an article for use in fraud, obtaining and supplying articles for use in a Computer Misuse Act 1990 offence, and causing a computer to perform a function with intent to secure unauthorised access to a program or data.
Allsopp, from Tamworth, admitted supplying an article for use in fraud and supplying articles for use in a Computer Misuse Act 1990 offence.
The pair will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Monday.
The pair will be sentenced in the Old Bailey, London, pictured, on Monday