blog Up until now, relatively little information has been known about The Impact Team — the shadowy group of anonymous hackers who have released gigabytes upon gigabytes of data from extramarital affair site Ashley Madison. However, pioneering US security journalist Brian Krebs — who has broken a number of major hacking stories over the past several years — thinks he may have tracked down one of the perpetrators. The kicker? He appears to be Australian and may be a fan of local supergroup AC/DC. Krebs writes on his site, Krebs on Security (we recommend you click here to examine the evidence) regarding a Twitter user known as ‘Thadeus Zu’, who appears to be based in Australia:
“It is possible that Zu is instead a white hat security researcher or confidential informant who has infiltrated the Impact Team and is merely riding on their coattails or acting as their mouthpiece. But one thing is clear: If Zu wasn’t involved in the hack, he almost certainly knows who was.”
According to Krebs, Zu was responsible for, among other things, defacing the website of the Federal Parliament, and has a habit of linking the AC/DC song ‘Thunderstruck’ in his online exchanges.
At this point, the evidence is a little sketchy regarding Zu. Krebs doesn’t appears to have much, if any, inside information regarding this individual. However, Krebs is very well known in the US for the forensic style in which he examines online clues left by hackers to track them down. The fact that the journalist has pointed the finger at Zu indicates that there is something worth investigating here. I am absolutely certain that police in several jurisdictions have already made note of Krebs’ post.
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of the Ashley Madison hackers was based in Australia. As a country, we regularly throw up hackers of various types, due no doubt to our relatively high education levels and somewhat rebellious past ;)
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