Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2008/10/22/miley_cyrus_hack_raid/

Feds raid Miley Cyrus hack suspect

Social engineering and risqué snaps

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 22nd October 2008 15:19 GMT

A hacker who allegedly uploaded pictures of 15-year-old Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus onto the net was raided by the FBI on Monday.

Agents carried away three computers and a mobile phone for forensic examination after raiding the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, home of Josh Holly. The 19-year-old allegedly bragged online that he'd broken into the TV star's Gmail account (messagemebaby@gmail.com) and downloaded suggestive pictures, which reportedly included pictures of the underage star "posing provocatively" in her underwear and snaps of her in a wet T-shirt and baring her midriff while posing in front of a mirror in a bathroom.

Holly (aka TrainReq) is yet to be charged with any offence. He reportedly admitted breaking into Cyrus's webmail account and the star's webmail page, which shared the same password, after successfully accessing the star's MySpace control panel. He allegedly boasted about his exploit in interviews with bloggers and other interested parties, Wired reports, claiming that he used social engineering trickery to gain access to the MySpace admin panel.

The teen miscreant claims he was able to gain administrative access to MySpace systems after posing as a admin buddy of another administrator, and requesting login credentials via IM messages. The hacker allegedly gained free run of MySpace's systems for 16 hours until MySpace realised something was wrong and revoked the compromised login credentials. ®