UK cops: How we sniffed out convicted AnonOps admin 'Nerdo'

Hint: Sometimes gamer tags give the game away Weatherhead (Nerdo) was a network administrator and among a small group of leaders on an AnonOps IRC channel that became the focus of a police investigation, spearheaded by members of Scotland Yard's Police Central eCrime Unit.

Former Detective Constable Trevor Dickey, who has left the Met and found work in the private sector since the successful conclusion of the investigation, explained: "In a nutshell we identified Weatherhead via the IRC network."

"We identified their IRC channels and captured several weeks of chat. During that time we looked at the status of nicks such as admins and operators," he added.

"We then did some keyword searching and spent a lot of time looking social leakage. Combining all these elements we then identified the nicks of interest and did open source research on them. Weatherhead was easy to identify as he had been using the nick of 'Nerdo' for quite some time," he concluded.

Feature Complete >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/uk_anon_investigation/