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A British teenager has been sentenced to two years in a youth detention centre for compromising the email and phone accounts of senior US government officials in what a judge called acts of "cyber terrorism".
Prosecutors say Kane Gamble conned call centres during 2015-16 into revealing information that got him into the accounts of then-FBI director Mark Giuliano, then-secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, then-CIA chief John Brennan and other officials.
They say Gamble, who was part of a group of hackers called Crackas With Attitude, leaked some of the information he gathered using websites such as WikiLeaks.
The BBC said he targeted the databases from his bedroom in Leicestershire, and even managed to use the TV in the house of Mr Johnson to post the message "I own you".
He also left a voice message for Mr Johnson's wife, asking "Hi spooky, am I scaring you?".
The court heard he obtained "extremely sensitive" documents on military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and uploaded details of 20,000 FBI employees, with the message "This is for Palestine".
Gamble pleaded guilty last year. The 18-year-old was sentenced to youth custody on Friday in a London criminal court.
His defence said he was "naive" and never meant to "harm" any individuals, the BBC reported.
But Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said his "nasty campaign of politically motivated cyber-terrorism" had left victims feeling violated, and ordered the seizure of his computers.
AP/ABC
Topics: government-and-politics, computers-and-technology, defence-and-national-security, courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, united-kingdom
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