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

[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

[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

[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.

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.