Breach, Threat Management, Data Security, Incident Response, TDR

Pair of friends sentenced for 2015 TalkTalk hack

A pair of friends who were responsible for the 2015 TalkTalk data breach were sentenced Monday.

Matthew Hanley, 23, and Connor Allsopp, 21, both of Tamworth, Staffordshire, U.K., admitted to their role in the hack which is estimated to have cost the telecom company £77 million and compromised 156,959 accounts exposing names, addresses and dates of birth, according to the BBC.

While a 17-year old boy initially exposed the vulnerability and posted details of the flaw online, Allsopp and Hanley took advantage of the exposure and carried out the attack ,which led to Hanley being sentenced to 12 months and Allsopp sentenced to eight months.

Hanley admitted to his role in hacking into the website, supplying data to another involved individual and giving Allsopp the personal and financial details of customers while Allsopp also admitted obtaining the Nasa passwords.

The breach also caused TalkTalk to get hit by a hefty £400,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for not appropriately securing the data.

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