Krebs Hacker Unmasked, Hit Ars and Wired's Honan

altjira writes "Brian Krebs, hot on the tail of the hacker who DDOS his site and SWATted his home, followed up on a tip, found the dox, called and then outed his hacker. Turns out it may have been the same guy who hit Wired's Mat Honan and Ars Technica." The attacker is ... a 20 year old guy who apparently has too much time on his hands, and was surprisingly careless with his personal information for someone exploiting the personal information of others.

Comments

SWATting

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder

Re:SWATting

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder

No, the policemen doing the shooting before asking questions should be charged with attempted murder.

In the same way that, if I told a bully someone insulted him behind his back, and he went and punched that guy, the bully would be charged.

Re:SWATting

[houghi]

If your intend was to get the other person punched then you should be charged AS WELL. One does not exclude the other.

Re:SWATting

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I was on a jury that convicted a man of reckless homicide after a street race ended up in a horrible crash.

So yeah if someone had been shot then a similar charge should apply.

Re:SWATting

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree it should be a crime of some sort, the person pulling the trigger should be the one charged with murder.

You're right. If, say, the person being SWAT'ed pulls a gun in self defense, because all he knows is his house is being invaded, and a police officer sees it and fires, as they are trained to do when seeing a lethal threat, that is TOTALLY murder.

More accurately, I think SWATing somebody should be negligent homicide if somebody dies, reckless endangerment if (as usually happens) nobody is hurt.

Re:SWATting

[The Grim Reefer]

Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder

While I understand your sentiment, I have to disagree with you. In cases like "SWATting" these officers have been called to a scene where the assumption is that there is an armed person who has already killed a loved on and is emotionally distraught. As most law enforcement officers will tell you, domestic disturbances are some of the most unpredictable calls to go to. So a call like this would be about as scary as most police will ever get.

Granted, there are some pretty bad police officers out there. But there are a lot more really good ones. It's just that nobody seems to pay attention to them, except on rare occasions. Go check to see how much they get paid. It's pretty poorly in most cases. The average patrolman's salary is just over $50K An entry level application engineer makes a little over $54K. Barring natural disasters, a bad day at work for someone in IT is to have to work late. How much fun do you think it is to investigate a murder scene? Or a fatal car crash with children involved? For a patrolman a bad day could include coming home in a bag. In most professions a mistake will cost the company money. For an officer it could be someones life, or their own.

How would you handle call like this? Would you allow yourself to get shot prior to opening fire? Have you ever been shot at? Judging a situation after the fact from your nice comfy chair is just a little bit different than being an active participant.

It's funny that we will spend money to go see a movie and cheer on the cop who shoots the bad guy. But in 99.9% of the times you see this in movies, the "good guy" would be criminally charged for acting the way they do. But when a cop shoots someone who feigns having a gun and does not respond to commands to submit we through a fit. The asshole that called this in is the one at fault here for abusing the system that is in place to protect us.

Re:SWATting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... becoming a police officer is a CHOICE. Investigating murder scenes, cleaning up car crashes, and keeping angry wives and husbands from killing each other is part of the job. The people who become police officers CHOOSE to deal with these and other stressful situations, they CHOOSE to (occasionally) risk their lives. CHOOSING to put yourself in the line of fire is no excuse to trample on the rights of the people you're supposed to protect. If they want a bigger paycheck with safer working conditions, they can find different jobs.

I've seen this attitude plenty of times, where people seem to want to excuse the terrible behavior and the military-style tactics of police because "the poor dears have a tough job without much pay, cut them some slack." Well, NO! As people to whom the rest of us have given the right to use lethal force and invade and seize private property, the police should be held to a much higher standard, and they should be trained to understand that they work for us, not the other way around.

The bad apples in the police forces may very well be in the minority, I don't know. I've known cops who are friendly and cops who are psychopaths or arrogant jerks. For example, I knew a guy who worked as a juvenile prison guard (while studying to become a full-fledged cop) and bragged about "putting the smackdown" on teenagers who ran their mouths.

Most Crimes Are Solved

[hduff]

Most crimes are solved because the criminal is careless or stupid or both.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[slashmydots]

Most hackers especially are careless, stupid, and usually both. They think they're so invincible and cool and above security that they don't even take basic precautions. They think they have some kind of magical aura from being so tech savvy that protects them from "lesser" beings. Lol, good luck with that.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[SirGarlon]

I considered crime as a career option when I was young, and decided that it was for losers. Concealing repeated crime would require so much hard work and attention to detail, that anyone qualified to do it is also qualified for a rather high-paying job.

If you think about it, the saying "crime doesn't pay" is just another way of saying the labor market works.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[organgtool]

And your decision to play it straight has obviously paid off since it has taken you all the way to knighthood! :)

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[SirGarlon]

Sir Garlon is a villain from an obscure, early part of the King Arthur legend. He had the power of invisibility and used it to ambush and murder other knights, apparently just for the lulz. So really that choice of nick is a nod to my repressed impulses for mayhem and the way anonymity encourages snarkiness. :-)

Oh, BTW, crime did not pay for Sir Garlon, either. He got whacked, I believe by Sir Balan, to avenge one of Balan's kinsmen.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[Inda]

Most crimes are solved because people talk. Loose lips sink ships, and all that stuff.

People in the story are more than willing to talk. It's a bit sad.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[hduff]

I considered crime as a career option when I was young, and decided that it was for losers. Concealing repeated crime would require so much hard work and attention to detail, that anyone qualified to do it is also qualified for a rather high-paying job.

If you think about it, the saying "crime doesn't pay" is just another way of saying the labor market works.

I once spoke with an FBI agent about bak robberies. Most theft from banks is from employees, is almost always caught but rarely prosecuted because banks don't want the negaive publicity. They catch the regular bank robbers because they are careless or stupid or both. But there is a small number of inelligent, skilled bank robers that will never get caught because they know the system well, don't get greedy, don't live flamboyantly and never make mistakes. Fortunately, there are very few of these people, but a succesful life of crime is possible, but as you realized, way too much work.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[slashmydots]

No, I've seen too many Slashdot articles and security conventions. Trust me, it's reality. In fact, what planet are you watching movies on? Because on Earth they make hacker looks cool. In reality, they're immature and have no self esteem so they can never resist bragging online about their exploits. That's actually usually half the reason they did it.

Re:Most Crimes Are Solved

[yurtinus]

He had the power of invisibility

Oh, you mean Sir Not Appearing In This Film?

Young punks, too stupid in most ways that matter

[roman_mir]

This story is still in progress, but it's clear that this "Phobia" punk is intelligent enough in ways that really don't matter much and too stupid in ways that actually do matter. His father should have figured out what the son was doing a while ago, as his son is in the crime scene, stealing or helping to steal and use credit cards, SSNs, etc., breaking into private people's accounts and messing with them, paying for DDOS attacks against websites and sending SWAT teams to people's homes, so that somebody could actually get shot. This is all a punk move, what this idiot needs is about 3 years of labour camp, so that he'd at least repay some of the damage and 10 minutes of flogging on monthly basis, so that what could not be peacefully inserted into his brain would be painfully inserted into his back.

Re:Young punks, too stupid in most ways that matte

[roman_mir]

The dumbest thing was to talk but also to involve cops with the SWAT thing. If he just kept to online stealing and harassment this wouldn't be as bad as the SWAT thing, now the cops have a personal issue as well with him. The way he just blurted everything out showed how really 'smart' he is.

Re:Throw the Book At Him

[FooAtWFU]

"One of these days an innocent person is going to end up dead"? Clearly, sir, you have paid no attention to Libertarian media in the past decade or two. Go hop over to reason.com, ignore their tax policy proposals for a moment if they annoy you, and just do a search for all the fun articles about how a SWAT team prevented paramedics from going to work for hour and fourteen minutes after shooting a veteran as part of a drug raid on the neighbors.

Re:Young punks, too stupid in most ways that matte

[roman_mir]

He stole NO money.

- wrong, he did, read TFA. He is part of the network that steals and deals credit cards.

He steals money, why would anybody want to hire him unless they are a government propped bank? Maybe he has a future in current version of government propped banking or politics, but normal people will look at him and his approach and won't want to have anything to do with him.

He also stole private information of people, so how can he be even trusted to deal with customers, with anything?

He endangered lives of people by calling SWAT teams on them, I don't know how difficult it is to understand - this is not a fucking game, he could have caused real damage this way, to actual health and lives of people. I don't see any redeeming qualities in him yet, for me to see it he has to be punished and he has to learn something as well, and punishment is part of that learning process. As I said: actions ... consequences.