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U.K. police said on Thursday that the jailing of two hackers has \u201cseverely\u201d hampered the activities of the infamous cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider<\/a>.<\/p>\n Owen Flowers, 18, and Thalha Jubair, 20, pleaded guilty earlier this year to hacking Transport of London (TfL), the government body overseeing the U.K. capital\u2019s public transit system, in 2024. The two were sentenced to five years and six months in prison on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n The jailing of Flowers and Jubair is a reminder that, sometimes, the most dangerous and effective hackers don\u2019t work for sophisticated government agencies with millions of dollars of budget. More often, they are rather very young and smart hackers<\/a> motivated by money and infamy among their peers. <\/p>\n Groups such as Scattered Spider, as well as ShinyHunters<\/a>, another cybercriminal collective, often target and exploit employees and individuals rather than computer systems, a strategy that\u2019s both effective and hard to counter.<\/p>\n While hacking groups\u2019 members tend to come and go, the groups themselves can rebrand. But British authorities are convinced the jailing of Flowers and Jubair represents a significant blow to Scattered Spider, an amorphous group that\u2019s been linked to dozens of high-profile attacks, such as those against casino giant MGM<\/a>, airline WestJet<\/a>, and cybersecurity firm Okta<\/a>. These attacks in turn gave the hackers access to several of these companies\u2019 customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cScattered Spider has been the most significant cybercrime threat to the U.K. in recent years. Through this investigation, we have severely disrupted that threat and brought key offenders to justice,\u201d said Paul Foster, the head of the U.K. National Crime Agency\u2019s National Cyber Crime Unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n