Two teenagers who discussed nuking their access to Transport for London's systems during a cyberattack that cost the network £29M were each jailed for five and a half years at Woolwich Crown Court on Thursday. Owen Flowers, 18, and Thalha Jubair, 19, extracted data belonging to millions of Oyster card holders and left more than 140 systems inoperable, in an attack prosecutors said risked billions of pounds of damage to the wider economy.
The pair conspired between 31 August and 3 September 2024, both claiming at various points to belong to Scattered Spider, a group believed responsible for hundreds of attacks between 2022 and 2025. Both admitted a single charge under Section 3ZA of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, accepting they were reckless as to whether they caused, or created a significant risk of, serious damage to human welfare.
