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Comment by middleclick | Hacker News Reader

I am curious as to not only how did he find out the attackers identity but also got on the phone with his dad. I mean, this is straight out of detective novels.

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This is easier than you think. Most of these kids have no clue what they're actually doing and link their personal identities with the name they use.

I run (as a hobby) some game servers and have handled several DDoS incidents. Out of all of them, I think there's only been one that I couldn't find real-life details for. When this occurs and the perpetrator is a minor, and I can find details for them, I give the parents a friendly call and let them know. Usually this can be easily resolved in a peaceful manner and without any mention, threats or use of legal action.

At a guess, some searching of the kid's handle will probably lead to a Facebook page or something else that links back to his real identity, and something else related led to the father.

You should see the work he did on finding the guys behind the Target breach. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/12/whos-selling-credit-cards...

"After searching my huge personal archive of hacked cybercrime forums for Andrew’s various email and Jabber addresses, I found several private messages sent by different users on the Spamdot[dot]biz forum who recommended to other members the “ikaikki@neko.im” Jabber address as someone to contact in order to hire a service that could be used to flood someone’s Gmail inbox with tens or hundreds of thousands of junk messages."

several private messages sent by different users on the Spamdot[dot]biz forum who recommended to other members...

So, an archive of illegally obtained private communication? (Or, is it just questionably obtained by having several false identities across boards? The term hacked forums seems to suggest otherwise)...

I guess that by doing illegal surveillance, one kind find out things that aren't obvious. How surprising.

The sites were hacked by other hackers, and uploaded as a dump to the public. Krebs just has copies of them, that's all.

I think that's still a bit questionable. I'm not allowed to have copies of child porn, even if the children were abused by someone else and they uploaded the photos to the public.

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