French Hacker Arrested After Bragging On TV

Orome1 writes "A French hacker has effectually tied a noose around his own neck when he bragged about hacking into the systems of a big government contractor on national TV. He participated in a television program called Further investigation, and he said — and demonstrated — that he has gained access to computers belonging to the French Army and Thales Group, a French company that provides information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, and security markets. He was arrested 6 days after the program was aired. The police discovered on his computer a great number of compromised credit card and bank account data."

Re:happens to everyone

[pasv]

The trick to being a successful criminal (or so i've read) is to assume that you will be caught and plan ahead: don't brag, have your harddrives encrypted and off when not in use, never use a handle associated with one you box from home, etc. But most importantly don't break anymore laws than you absolutely have to to gain your objective because each one furthers your sentencing. These just seem obvious but as the parent says people let their guard down when they think that no one will ever catch them.

Re:Meh?

[Alarash]

I live in France so we have a little more details. He got caught because one of his username on some website in the background wasn't properly/entirely blurred by the TV journalists. Following that lead, the investigators caught him. Oops!

His Downfall was the TV producers.

[AftanGustur]

His downfall was actually a mistake by the production team.

Before emission they were masking his face and changing his voice, but during one sot where they filmed his screen while he ran a file browser on his PC, there was a directory name visible where information about his real name or "handle" could be seen.

This was quickly fixed in the version that was put on the internet but it was too late, the companies he bragged about having hacked filed a suit and the police came storming through his door and confiscated all hit stuff.