{"id":694817,"date":"2026-07-16T12:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694817\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:49:09","slug":"teen-hackers-jailed-after-live-streaming-cyber-attack-on-tfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694817\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen hackers jailed after live streaming cyber attack on TfL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two men who carried out a cyber-attack which crippled Transport For London (TfL) when they were teenagers have both been sentenced to five years and six months in prison. <\/p>\n

Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall, and Thalha Jubair, 20, from east London, pleaded guilty in June<\/a> to carrying out the hack in 2024.<\/p>\n

They were described as computer-obsessed loners who carried out the hack as part of the cyber crime collective known as Scattered Spider.<\/p>\n

The cyber-attack disrupted TfL’s online services for months, stole the personal data of millions of people<\/a> and left all 27,000 TfL employees needing to reset their passwords in person.<\/p>\n

Woolwich Crown Court heard the criminals streamed their 16 hour long cyber-attack online.<\/p>\n

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the rise of young hackers in the UK as one of the biggest threats to the nation’s cyber security.<\/p>\n

Flowers was 17 and Jubair was 18 when they hacked into the capital’s transport authority at 1700 on 31 August.<\/p>\n

Telegram messages sent between the pair showed them boasting about gaining access to TfL’s database of people with Oyster cards.<\/p>\n

The teens then searched the list for the personal details of London celebrities, before attempting to access banking details.<\/p>\n

“Scattered Spider is creating webs on the London Underground,” Flowers would later joke – referring to the loosely coordinated group of young English-speaking hackers.<\/p>\n

The group has been linked to dozens of other cyber-attacks including on retailers Marks and Spencer and the Co-op.<\/p>\n

In the last two years young men and boys have been arrested for Scattered Spider hacks in the UK, US and Finland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men who carried out a cyber-attack which crippled Transport For London (TfL) when they were teenagers have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-694817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}