The probe of the cyber-attacks on US and South Korean websites last week has turned up a number of suspected command computers, including a possible “master” server in the UK.
But researchers assisting the US government in the unusually intense inquiry still put the odds of an arrest at well under 20 per cent.
The UK computer was housed at Global Digital Broadcast: That company told the US authorities that the machine was controlled via a virtual public network at a Florida company. And the Florida firm, Digital Latin America, says it was hacked.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s US-CERT computer response team, along with a supporting cast of private researchers, are examining Digital Latin America’s logs to see if they can trace the hacker another hop.
The fact that the attack’s coordinator took this many steps to obscure his location does not mean he is an evil genius, experts said. Access to previously cracked networks is bought and sold on underground websites the same way code for infecting PCs is passed around.
On the other hand, the likelihood now is that the hacker wasn’t so dumb as to leave connections that will identify him to the feds.
