Hackers jailed over £77m Talk Talk cyber attack that affected thousands of customers

Two hackers have been jailed for their part in a £77m cyber attack on Talk Talk that compromised the financial details of thousands of customers.

Matthew Hanley, 23, from Tamworth, was jailed at the Old Bailey this afternoon for 12 months after admitting charges relating to the data breach in 2015.

Connor Allsopp, 21, also from Tamworth, was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The hack, between 16 October and 21 October 2015, affected up to 157,000 TalkTalk customers and led to the telecoms giant being fined a then-record £400,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office for failing to prevent the cyber attack.

The court heard that Hanley was a “determined and dedicated hacker”, who obtained customers' details and supplied them to Allsopp, who passed them on to another online user.

Dido Harding, the chief executive at the time, was then blackmailed, receiving demands for bitcoin in return for the stolen data.

The incident cost TalkTalk £77m due to combination of IT, incident response and consultancy costs linked to the attack.

Shares in the firm tumbled following the attack from 323p and today, more than three years on, the company share price was trading at 121p.

In the aftermath of the data breach, Harding gave up her bonus, instead donating the £220,000 to charity.

In addition, the remuneration committee said it had decided to cut executive directors' bonuses to 40 per cent of base pay, rather than the previously expected 62.5 per cent.