Hacker dodges jail after ‘doxing’ hunt officials

A cyber security expert has escaped jail after hacking hunt officials and leaking thousands of members’ details online in a “misguided” bid to expose illegal hunting. 

Abi Waddell used her skills to hack into the emails, social media and Cloud storage of hunt officials and supporters and publish their details online, known as doxing. 

Waddell, 54, was sentenced after admitting charges relating to six individuals, but prosecutor Jane Cooper told Bath Magistrates’ Court thousands of individuals were affected, adding: “All the victims only became aware when confidential details from those accounts were posted online.” 

Those victims include hunt officials connected with the Westerby Bassets, the Taunton Vale Harriers, the South Dorset Hunt and the Llanwnnen Farmers Hunt in Wales. One complainant, Sophie Knibb, reported the leak to Leicester police, who discovered her accounts had been accessed from a VPN . However, one of Waddell’s computers was traced to the Avon and Somerset area and eventually pinpointed her address, where detectives found animal rights promotion material. 

Presiding magistrate Victoria Castell sentenced Waddell to four months imprisonment on each charge to run concurrently and suspended for a year. Waddell was also ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid community work and her laptop is to be destroyed.