Hi, I'm Ran Levy.

Welcome to Malicious Life in collaboration with cyber reason.

Quick content warning before we get started,

this episode contains discussion of a grisly murder. How do you catch a hacker who's covered their tracks?

Security experts have all kinds of ways of tracking cyber criminals.

Sometimes it doesn't take much.

If a hacker isn't careful, like Gary McKinnon, whose story we told in an earlier episode of malicious life,

they may leave behind personal data like an IP address or a girlfriend's email address.

Yon Johanson, the teenager behind D.C.S. openly bragged about his role in creating an illegal

software. All anybody had to do to get to him was, well, write an email.

Advanced actors such as nation states are tougher to pin down.

When GitHub was attacked, it was the insight of one independent security professional to use

trace route.

An ancient and somewhat obscure system command that tracks Internet

packets.

When Sonny, Google and the Democratic National Committee were hacked, circumstantial evidence, such as the nature of the attack

and the victims and systems that were targeted, played heavily into attributing those

responsible.

But let's suppose we've got a case where no such clues are available.

We're dealing with a really good hacker.

They've listened to every malicious life episode

and so they know all the pitfalls to avoid.

...