A 17-year-old boy has admitted seven hacking offences linked to the TalkTalk data breach in October 2015 after appearing at Norwich Youth Court.

Personal data of 156,959 customers including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses was said to have been accessed in the hack.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that in 15,656 cases, bank account details and sort codes had been accessed.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested in Norwich on November 3, 2015, and charged with breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990 following an investigation by the Metropolitan Police's Cyber Crime Unit.

The boy admitted the seven charges when he appeared at Norwich Youth Court on Tuesday.

In October 2016 the telecoms company was fined a record £400,000 for security failings over the "significant and sustained" cyber attack in 2015 which allowed customer data to be accessed "with ease".

The ICO said the "car crash" hack could have been prevented if TalkTalk had taken basic steps to protect customers' information.

The teenager will be sentenced on December 13.