Team Poison hacker jailed over Tony Blair security breach

A teenage hacker who stole private information belonging to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and clogged up the UK’s national anti-terrorism telephone hotline, has been jailed for six months.

Junaid Hussain, 18, of Birmingham, broke into the Gmail account of Blair aide Katie Kay and stole information including Tony Blair’s address and phone book – containing email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses for Blair’s family, friends and MPs.

Members of the Team Poison hacking gang then published the hacked information online, sparking security fears about the safety of the former Prime Minister, his friends and associates.

When Hussain was arrested in April, a Facebook chat window on his computer bragged of “hacking a number of different people and organisations, including Tony Blair”.

Hussain’s defence team claimed that his…

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.