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Aubrey Cottle has been criminally charged in Canada and the U.S. in connection with the 2021 hack of the Texas GOP.
Netflix/Netflix Lawyers for a Canadian hacker linked to the notorious hacktivist group Anonymous say it’s “peculiar” that their client has been charged in connection with an alleged cyberattack on the Texas Republican Party four years after a police investigation into the matter. Aubrey Cottle, a 37-year-old resident of Oshawa, Ont., has been criminally charged in Canada and the United States in connection with the 2021 hack of the Texas GOP.
He was granted bail last week and is scheduled to appear in court on May 8. “The timing of these charges is peculiar,” Riaz Sayani, a partner at Toronto-based criminal law firm Savards LLP, said in an e-mailed statement on behalf of Mr. Cottle’s legal team.
“The allegations against Mr. Cottle are almost four years old. Canadian and American authorities investigated at the time.
No one laid charges then. Now that President [Donald] Trump is in office, Canadian authorities have chosen to co-operate with the FBI and Department of Justice to charge Mr. Cottle,” the statement read.
Mr. Cottle is represented by Mr. Sayani and Arash Ghiassi in Canada, and Tor Ekeland in the U.
S. Mr. Ekeland, who is based in New York, is known for defending hackers.
He has previously defended clients aligned with Anonymous, a hacking collective that first gained notoriety for wearing Guy Fawkes masks to protest against the Church of Scientology. The statement noted that Mr. Cottle has not been charged with hacking “anything in Canada” and that he “looks forward to answering these charges in court.
” U.S. authorities allege that Mr.
Cottle, who goes by the online alias Kirtaner, bragged on social media that he was responsible for the attack on the Texas GOP, which occurred by first gaining access to web-hosting company Epik. In a post on Discord, Mr. Cottle allegedly described the web-hosting company as being “known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi and other extremist content,” according to a U.
S. court document. The U.
S. criminal complaint against Mr. Cottle was filed last September and unsealed on March 28, two days after he was arrested by Canadian authorities.
On March 31, the Ontario Provincial Police announced Canadian charges against Mr. Cottle. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted on the U.
S. charges. None of the allegations have been proven in court.
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