Serial Hacker Sentenced for Defacing and Hacking Organizational Websites

Al-Tahery Al-Mashriky, 26, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was given a 20-month prison sentence for several charges of illegal computer access and data exfiltration, part of a major crackdown on ideologically driven cyberthreats.

Al-Mashriky, affiliated with extremist hacking collectives such as the ‘Spider Team’ and ‘Yemen Cyber Army,’ was apprehended in August 2022 by the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) specialized cybercrime unit, following intelligence shared by U.S. law enforcement.

Extensive Cyber Intrusions

Forensic examination of his seized devices, including a laptop and multiple mobile phones, revealed a pattern of sophisticated intrusions targeting government, media, and organizational websites across North America, Yemen, and Israel.

Investigators linked him to these groups through correlated social media profiles and email artifacts, exposing his role in propagating religious and political ideologies via digital sabotage.

Al-Mashriky’s modus operandi involved exploiting vulnerabilities in low-security web infrastructures to gain unauthorized access, followed by the deployment of ...