Mitnick helps bust bomb hoaxer

From Security Focus: bq. Ex-hacker Kevin Mitnick is a hero to the small town of River Rouge, Michigan, after using his tech skills to help officials nab the culprit behind a harrowing series of bomb threats. bq. The trouble began a few months ago, when staff members at River Rouge High School began receiving threatening phone calls at home from an anonymous caller, police Detective Lt. John Keck says. Then, on April 2nd , a caller phoned in a bomb threat to the high school during school hours - students were evacuated and the town's three patrol cars diverted to the school to conduct a thorough search. No bomb was found. Another call came in on April 5th, with similar results. Kevin worked with the Police, educating them on how the hoaxer was able to do what they did and what to do to track them down: bq. Armed with Mitnick's advice, Keck went back to SBC and demanded a "terminating number search" for any calls made to the high school's lines on the dates of the bomb threats. This time, SBC tracked the calls as far as cell phone carrier Sprint PCS, and identified the specific trunks on which the calls entered the local phone network -- information that Keck now knew how to interpret. The detective served a search warrant on Sprint, and on April 19th he had the suspect's name and cell phone number. The suspect (who confessed) was a 15 year old student who was making the calls from class from his personal cell phone. Kevin's take on the guy: bq. And does the ex-hacker have any mixed feelings about helping bust River Rouge's trouble-making teen? "He wasn't really hacking," says Mitnick. "He was really just being a jerk" Heh...