A hacker who broke into the UK National Lottery’s website in 2016 has been sentenced to nine months in prison for his ill-fated and ultimately unrewarding efforts.

In November 2016, National Lottery operator Camelot warned customers that their personal data may have been compromised after determining that unauthorized individuals had gained access to around 26,500 online accounts.

The following spring, police traced one of the IP addresses from which the hack occurred to Aston University. Police then arrested suspect Idris Kayode Akinwunmi, who quickly cracked under police interrogation and gave up two other suspects with whom he claimed to have communicated only through a WhatsApp chat forum.

Akinwunmi claimed a WhatsApp user identified only as ‘Rosegold’ was the primary instigator of the National Lottery hack. Akinwunmi claimed Rosegold had supplied him with the brute-forcing tool Sentry MBA and instructed him on how to use it to access the National Lottery accounts.