Aubrey Cottle, an Anonymous-linked hacker from Oshawa, has been sentenced to 18 months after he admitted his involvement in a 2021 website defacement attack on the Republican Party of Texas (also called GOP/Grand Old Party). The sentencing was delivered by Justice Joseph Di Luca on Friday in a Newmarket courtroom.
Steven Monacelli, an independent investigative journalist from Texas, was the first to report the breach after finding a statement from the hackers online.
Cottle will remain in custody for another 175 days (nearly six months) because the rest of it he has already spent waiting for his trial. Last week, he pleaded guilty to three charges, including damaging data, getting computer services illegally, and breaking his bail rules by using the internet without supervision.
As per court records, on September 11, 2021, hackers with the Anonymous hacking collective attacked a US-based firm called Epik- a web host (a company that stores website files and keeps them live on the internet) that hosted the website for the Texas Republicans.
Cottle changed the homepage of the political website (texasgop.org) to display cartoon characters, a music video, and adult images. It was done to protest against a Texas abortion law. He also stole 180 gigabytes of files. This backup data contained private details about staff and people who gave money to the political party. Cottle then shared these stolen files on social media and took credit for the action on TikTok.
Before his arrest, Cottle worked legally as a security researcher and was part of the research team at Sakura Samurai. Hackread.com has been covering his work from early 2021, including discovering a software bug in the chat app Keybase that stopped deleted pictures from being wiped, and finding a flaw that exposed the personal data of 100,000 United Nations employees.
However, his actions turned illegal later that year. In a US Department of Justice press release from 2025, federal officials announced they had unsealed criminal charges against him for the Texas attack. The criminal complaint filed in 2024 is available here.
If extradited to the US, Cottle could face an extra five years in prison. His lawyers have opposed his extradition and even requested Prime Minister Mark Carney to intervene to prevent Cottle’s extradition because a person shouldn’t be tried twice for the same actions.
The 39-year-old hacker now wants to change his life as he told the court his crimes were “a waste of my gifts, intellect and talents,” and plans to finish his university degree and open a security company.
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