Christopher Weatherhead, who operated under the alias Nerdo, was given an 18-month sentence by Southwark Crown Court in London, after being found guilty of conspiring to impair the operation of computers between August 1, 2010, and January 22, 2011.

Weatherhead, who was described as the leader of the group, was convicted last month according to the 1977 UK Criminal Law Act.

He admitted participating in a “distribution denial of service” known as a DDoS on the financial services website. DDoS attacks cripple websites by flooding them with information until they crash.