Two young men convicted of the 2024 cyber-attack on Transport for London were repeat offenders well known to law enforcement long before the breach. Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall, and Thalha Jubair, 20, from east London, pleaded guilty Monday to the attack, which disrupted TfL services for months, exposed data on millions of people and forced all 28,000 TfL staff to reset their passwords in person.
The trial heard both were part of Scattered Spider, the loose collective of young English-speaking cyber-criminals also linked to the Marks and Spencer and Co-op attacks.
Flowers first caught police attention shortly after turning 16, when officers issued a cease and desist order. Jubair has 22 previous convictions, started offending at 14, and had already received a youth rehabilitation order over Lapsus$-linked attacks on Nvidia and BT/EE. Both are wanted in the US, though the BBC understands American authorities won't pursue Flowers further; Jubair's US case involves alleged theft and extortion of $87m.
Sentencing is set for July 16. The National Crime Agency wants new Cyber Crime Risk Orders — proposed under Computer Misuse Act reforms — to let police restrict high-risk offenders before the next breach.
Source: BBC News