14 DAY TRIAL // Junaid Hussain of Birmingham, better known as TriCk, the leader of the TeaMp0isoN collective, has pleaded guilty to hacking into the Gmail account of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and to making more than 100 prank calls that targeted the UK's counter-terrorism hotline.
Hussain, who has recently turned 18, faces jail time for making public the information he stole from Tony Blair’s account, including addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, The Sun reports.
The hacker’s attorney attempted to convince the court that the calls he had made were a mere hoax, but Judge Peter Testar stated that there was a good chance that Hussain could go to prison.
The sentencing will take place next month.
In the meantime, authorities are investigating other data breaches performed by TriCk and his teammates.
In an interview we had with Hussain earlier this year, he described himself as being a true hacktivist who fought for the rights of individuals from regions such as Syria, Kashmir and Palestine.
At the time, he was confident that law enforcement didn't have any clues to his real identity.
“100% certain they have nothing on me. I don’t exist to them, I’ve never used my real details online, I’ve never purchased anything. My real identity dosen’t exist online. - and no I don’t fear getting caught,” he said.
However, after the MI6 “phone bombing” things changed. Our sources told us that the hacker had failed to properly hide his identity while giving an interview to another publication, a fact that may have led to his arrest shortly after the incident.
As far as other members of the group are concerned, MLT was taken into custody a few weeks after TriCk.
Although we haven’t been able to confirm it, Phantom may have also been detained by Russian authorities. This is reinforced by the fact that some of the hacker collectives formerly associated with TeaMp0isoN have started posting #FreePhantom hashtags next to their recent data leaks.