A 26-year-old hacker, who breached websites in North America, Yemen, and Israel, and stole the details of millions of people has been sent to prison.
Al-Tahery Al-Mashriky was arrested in August 2022 by members of the National Crime Agency (NCA) in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, after he was linked to the Yemen Cyber Army hacking group through social media and email accounts.
NCA investigators forensically examined Al-Mashriky’s laptop and cellphones, and found digital evidence that he had broken into the websites of – amongst others – the Yemen Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Yemen Ministry of Security Media, and Israeli Live News.
In addition, according to a press release issued by the NCA, the hacker had targeted faith websites in the United States and Canada, as well as the website of the California State Water Board.
And on Al-Mashriky’s seized laptop, investigators found the personal data of over 4000 Facebook users, as well as files containing usernames and passwords for online services such as PayPal and Netflix.
Through the sheer number of attacks and website defacements he perpetrated, Al-Mashriky gained an online reputation amongst the hacking community while hiding behind a range of online aliases. In one online post on a hacking forum, Al-Mashriky claimed to have hacked into over 3000 websites during a three month period in 2022.
The Yemen Cyber Army first emerged ten years ago, in the wake of the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war.
One of its first attacks was against the website of the al-Hayat newspaper – where it displayed an image of a Hezbollah leader and shared a message in Arabic:
“We have few words to say to you, prepare your bomb shelters.”
The hacking group has historically primarily concerned itself with website defacements like this, but has also stolen data from compromised sites.
For instance, one of its earliest recorded hacks occurred in May 2015 when it released millions of records that it had exfiltrated from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Yemen Cyber Army also leaked login credentials, thousands of emails, documents, emails, presentations, and spreadsheets that they had stolen in the attack.
Al-Mashriky, who pled guilty in March, has now been sentenced to 20 months in prison.
“Al-Mashriky’s attacks crippled the websites targeted, causing significant disruption to their users and the organisations, just so that he could push the political and ideological views of the Yemen Cyber Army,” said Paul Foster, head of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit. “He had also stolen personal data that could have enabled him to target and defraud millions of people. Cybercrime can often appear faceless, with the belief that perpetrators hide in the shadows and can avoid detection. However, as this investigation shows, the NCA has the technical capability to pursue and identify offenders like Al-Mashriky and bring them to justice.”