LONDON — A British teenager has been jailed for two years for compromising the email and phone accounts of senior U.S. government officials in what a judge called acts of “cyber-terrorism.”

Prosecutors say that in 2015-16, Kane Gamble conned call centres 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 top officials. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Kane Gamble posted the message "I own you" on Jeh Johnson's home TV

Gamble - the founder of hacking group, Crackas With Attitude (CWA) - pleaded guilty in October to 10 charges. According to the BBC, the judge described Gamble’s hacking efforts as “an extremely nasty campaign of politically-motivated cyber terrorism” and called Gamble the leader of a “cyber gang.”

Despite claims that Gamble has turned a new leaf and has already attempted to make good use of his technical knowledge by disclosing potentially dangerous security bugs to companies, the judge sentenced the teen to two years at a youth detention center. Over the course of the hacking campaign, Gamble and other members of CWA got their hands on a number of sensitive documents that contained information about military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. 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. The British youth had admitted to successfully targeting several top intelligence officials during the Obama era, including then-chief of the CIA, John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Obama's deputy national security adviser, Avril Haines.
The Central Criminal Court in London jails Kane Gamble, 18, for two years for unlawfully accessing CIA, FBI and United States Department of Justice databases and phone and email accounts of senior US intelligence officials.