Teenage hackers arrested after live cyber attack on TfL

Two teenagers who carried out a cyber attack that crippled Transport for London (TFL) have both been jailed for five years and six months.

Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall and Talha Jubeir, 20, from East London. He pleaded guilty in June In 2024 to carry out the abduction.

It is stated that they are loners busy with computers who committed the hacking as part of a cyber crime group called Scattered Spider.

The cyber attack disrupted TfL’s online services for months. He stole the personal information of millions of people And it leaves all 27,000 TfL staff needing to manually reset their passwords.

Woolwich Crown Court heard the criminals broadcast a 16-hour cyber attack online.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has identified the rise of young hackers in the UK as a major threat to the country’s cyber security.

In the year Flowers, 17, and Jubeir, 18, were 17 when they infiltrated the capital’s Transport Authority at 1700 on August 31.

Telegram messages sent between the pair showed Oyster card holders bragging about accessing TfL’s database.

The youngsters then searched the list for personal details of London celebrities before trying to find their bank details.

“A disorganized spider is weaving a web in the London underground,” Flowers would later joke – referring to the loosely organized group of young English-speaking hackers.

The group has been linked to dozens of other cyber attacks, including on retailers Marks and Spencer and the Co-op.

In the past two years, young men and boys have been arrested in a spate of spider abductions in the UK, US and Finland.