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Aubrey Cottle, a hacker associated with the Anonymous collective, at his Oshawa, Ont., home in April, 2025. Mr. Cottle pleaded guilty to three charges last week.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Canadian hacker Aubrey Cottle has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to three charges stemming from a cyberattack on the Texas Republican Party that was associated with notorious hacktivist group Anonymous.
Justice Joseph Di Luca of the Ontario Superior Court delivered Mr. Cottle’s sentence in a Newmarket courtroom Friday.
After being reduced by time served, Mr. Cottle is to stay in custody for another 175 days, or roughly five months and three weeks.
Mr. Cottle pleaded guilty last week to fraudulently obtaining a computer service, namely the systems of web-hosting company Epik, causing mischief to data belonging to the Texas GOP, and failing to comply with the conditions of his bail.
He breached his bail by not living with his mother and accessing the internet unsupervised, Justice Di Luca told the court.
The Crown was seeking a 2½-year sentence, reduced by pretrial credit, while the defence was seeking time served.
The 39-year-old resident of Oshawa, Ont., who goes by the online alias Kirtaner, has been at the Central East Correctional Centre in the Ontario community of Lindsay since late October.
One of his lawyers, Riaz Sayani, a partner at Toronto-based criminal law firm Savards LLP, told the court that Mr. Cottle has faced especially harsh conditions at the prison, including extensive lockdowns resulting in limited yard time, a triple-bunked cell and a malfunctioning toilet that required him to hold his bowels for days. His mental health has deteriorated, Mr. Sayani told the court last week.
Mr. Cottle was criminally charged in both Canada and the United States last year in connection with a hack of the Texas GOP’s website on Sept. 11, 2021.
Mr. Cottle defaced the website, replacing its banner with cartoon characters, a pornographic image and a Rick Astley music video. He also downloaded 180 gigabytes of data, including sensitive personal and financial information, from a Texas GOP web server and shared that data online, according to the facts Justice Di Luca read out in court. Mr. Cottle gained access to the Texas GOP website by infiltrating Epik.
Anonymous, a loose collective of hacktivists with whom Mr. Cottle has acknowledged involvement, issued a press release taking credit for the attack.
In the U.S., Mr. Cottle has been charged with unlawfully transferring, possessing or using a means of identification with the intent to commit, or aid or abet, or in connection with unlawful activity under state or federal law.
Mr. Cottle’s lawyers have called for the U.S. charges to be withdrawn because they are for the same conduct that he is already serving time for in Canada. They have also called on the Canadian government to refuse an extradition request should there be one.
During his plea hearing, Mr. Cottle vowed to leave criminality in his past, calling it “a waste of my gifts, intellect and talents” and said he needs to be there for his five-year-old son.
His lawyer said he intends to start a cybersecurity consulting firm, complete a computer-science degree and hopes to work for the Canadian government one day.
Justice Di Luca listed a number of aggravating and mitigating factors that he considered in arriving at his decision.
Aggravating factors included the significant impact that the offences had on the Texas Republican Party and its members, the fact that the offences undermined the democratic process and the “flagrant” manner in which Mr. Cottle ignored a condition of his bail.
Mitigating factors included Mr. Cottle’s lack of a criminal record, the fact that he accepted responsibility for his offences by pleading guilty and his “very positive rehabilitative prospects,” Justice Di Luca said.
After reading out the sentence, Justice Di Luca asked Mr. Cottle, who was seated in the prisoner’s box, to stand, and addressed him directly:
“Sir, I hope you have learned a life lesson through your involvement in these offences. … You are an incredibly skilled and talented person. Those skills and talents are a gift. You should use that gift to do good, especially going forward. I wish you good luck.”
Mr. Cottle, who was dressed in a black puffer vest and wore his chin-length hair half up half down, was permitted to hug his mother before he was handcuffed and escorted out of the courtroom.