Teampoison
Teampoison screengrab

A hacker with the Team Poison hacktivists was jailed for six months for posting former PM Tony Blair's personal details on the internet and launching a "phone bomb" on the national anti-terror hotline. The bomb jammed up the emergency number with non-stop calls for 24 hours.

Junaid Hussain accessed the email account of Blair's former special adviser Katie Kay's email account and copied her contacts. He dumped phone numbers and addresses, as well as the ex-premier's email address and National Insurance number.

Other data related to Blair's wife Cherie, sister-in-law Lyndsey Booth, his children and friends as well as sitting MPs and Lords.

Hussain, along with other members of Team Poison, also bombarded the police's anti-terror hotline with prank calls and later posted recorded conversations between staff on the line on YouTube, featuring two people discussing an alleged hack by 700 hoax calls.

"You told the probation officer that someone suggested Tony Blair's PA should be a target," said Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith QC. "You succeeded in hacking the personal account of Kay, with some 150 contacts. Some or all of those were then posted on the internet. She received abusive calls and emails from here and abroad.

"This was a gross invasion of her privacy and those of her associates, for which you were responsible. There were very real dangers in details of her associates being freely available."

Custodial sentences

Loraine-Smith said the prank calls could have stopped "genuine callers getting through".

"There is no doubt both of these offences deserve custodial sentences," he added.

Hussain, of Birmingham, was arrested in April.

Team Poison is affiliated with many anti-US and anti-Israel hacking teams such as Mujahideen Hacking Unit and ZCompany Hacking Crew (ZHC).

It is a rival of LulzSec, an offshoot of the Anonymous group which declared it was disbanding nine months ago after almost 50 days of constant attacks.

In February, six of the group's leading members were arrested after the most prominent of them, known as Sabu, turned informer.

Team Poison released in June 2011 the alleged personal details of various LulzSec members alongside information on the AnonOps IRC server, including IP addresses and passwords.

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