The biggest hurdle to catching cybercriminals is usually that they are hard to identify or connect to alleged crimes.

Sometimes, a suspect is identified but nobody knows where they are.

And then there is the rarer but frustrating situation where the authorities are sure they know the identity of an attacker, and where they live, but still can’t apprehend them.

This seems to be the case with Behzad Mesri, alleged by US prosecutors to be behind May’s spectacular attack on HBO that resulted in the leaking of 1.5TB of data, including un-aired episodes of several popular shows, a Games of Thrones script, staff contacts, account credentials, and financial data.

Quite a haul, that reportedly came with a gloating ransom note demanding “our 6-month salary in bitcoin,” equivalent to $6m (£4.5m).

Read full news article on Naked Security