The hacker was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing two unreleased songs from Boss Huang and selling them.

CTOnews.com, Oct. 23 (Xinhua)-- Adrian Kwiatkowski, a 23-year-old hacker from Ipswich, UK, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing two unreleased songs by singer Ed Sheeran (commonly known in China as "Boss Huang"), according to BBC.

Kwiatkowski reportedly sold songs by Boss Huang and 12 songs by American rapper Lil Uzi Vert in cryptocurrency worth 131000 pounds (about 1.065 million yuan) on the Dark Internet.

British prosecutors said Kwiatkowski obtained unpublished tracks by hacking into their cloud accounts, but did not specify which cloud services they were.

CTOnews.com learned that the United States launched an investigation as early as 2019 after several musicians reported to the New York district attorney's office that their accounts had been hacked using the name Spirdark and their tracks were sold online. Investigators eventually found out that the hacker behind Spirdark was Kwiatkowski. The survey also found that Kwiatkowski stole a total of 1263 unreleased songs.

In total, Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to 19 charges, including copyright infringement and possession of criminal property, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.