How I Got the Story: Halethorpe Man Helps Take Down Hackers

The mission of Arbutus Patch is to cover news that happens in our neighborhood. Most of the time the topics are local crime, schools, events and community issues.

Since the launch of Arbutus Patch a little more than a year ago, we have also had our share of major news stories—, a , Hurricane Irene and the in its aftermath, the .

Every time I take a swing at a story, I aim to go over the fence. Whether covering a or a , I want my work to be as complete, accurate and informative as possible, crafted to the best of my ability.

The most satisfying stories, professionally speaking, are the scoops. It’s a rare occasion to say something new, to tell a story, or a side of a story, that hasn’t been previously told.

Arbutus Patch broke the news about and received positive feedback for coverage of Matthew VanDyke’s adventures in Libya. Arbutus Patch was the first English-language publication to . (I learned this from an Arabic web site translated over the phone by a Libyan expatriate source. Within a week or so after I broke that news, the Baltimore Sun and other media picked up on it.)

One story from the past year—my , who helped cops break up the LulzSec hacking group--stands out because of the reaction from my Patch colleagues, a bunch of very experienced and seasoned journalists. When other reporters ask, “How’d you do that?” it’s a good day.

The story behind the story:

Last June, my wife scheduled a well-deserved vacation for us -- a week at Cape May, N.J. I tried my very best to unplug—taking the 10-speed along for daily rides and spending time collecting Cape May diamonds with the kids. With the assistance of a little beer and the distraction of the ocean, I resisted the urge to check email.

One brief email caught my eye, a news alert from a British publication that mentioned a Halethorpe man who helped authorities break up a destructive hacking group called Lulz Security, or LulzSec.

Somebody in my neighborhood appeared to be involved in bringing down an international hacking ring!

Information posted on a site used by hackers supposedly included his email and street addresses, phone number, photograph and other personal data. Obtaining the information meant visiting a site used by hackers for criminal activity and monitored by cybersecurity and law enforcement agencies.

I tried to ignore this nugget of news. Really. But like a splinter, the thought was always in mind, just below the surface of the waves breaking over us at the beach.

Late at night, when everyone was asleep, I sent an email to what was supposed to be Major's email address. No response. A couple of days later, I tried the phone number. It went to a generic voice mail system. I left a message but never received a call back. I did a reverse lookup on the address to try to find another phone number. No luck.

There was little else I could do until returning home except chill out and eat more fried clams.

On my first day back to work, I drove to find Major’s house, located in an out-of-the-way area of Halethorpe in a cul-de-sac sharing a long driveway.

One residence faced an overgrown wooded area with no clear path to the front door and no house number. I thought it unwise to skulk through the property to the back door since the man inside might already be thinking people are out to get him.

As I started to walk back to my car, a voice came behind me: “Can I help you?”

I recognized Major’s youthful face from the image released by LulzSec. I told him who I was and my reason for being there. All of the reporting on the LulzSec case was based on official sources—law enforcement agencies. I wanted to hear what happened from one of the participants.

Major said that he wasn’t speaking to police or media.

But I didn't leave, and he didn't ask me to. I began shooting the breeze. He confirmed his age and educational background. I asked whether he was concerned for his safety. I asked how a proxy network works, even though I already knew. I tried to keep him talking.

Eventually, Major started discussing some of his own exploits and details of the LulzSec take-down. Without ever losing eye contact, I slowly reached into my back pocket and pulled out my reporter’s notebook. Nodding while listening intently, I started taking notes, stopping him to check the idiosyncratic capitalization and spelling of hacker “leet speak.”

Major never said that anything was off the record. We talked a good while, standing there in his driveway, until I felt I had a sufficient grasp of Major’s role in the LulzSec case. I had several pages of good notes.

I thanked Major for his time, and figured I’d risk going for broke.

“Can I take your picture?” I asked.

No, he replied.

“What if I don’t show your face? Can I take a picture of the back of your head?”

Okay, he said.

I got one photo. In retrospect I wish I’d pushed to take a few more shots. I just felt lucky that Major wasn’t running me off his property.

My hands were trembling in the car. I drove a couple of blocks away and pulled over to write a few more notes from memory, then headed home for several hours of intense writing. By a little after 10 p.m. that evening, my story was finished, reviewed by my editor and posted online.

The story was picked up by Huffington Post and a few other publications, tweeted about around the world and made a particular splash in the cybersecurity community.

Traffic? The currency of an online article is the number of people who read it, which is documented by Patch internal analytics, and this story produced a lot of it.

But the delicious part was the knowledge that Arbutus Patch readers had a story that no other news outlet had.

And that was a very good day indeed.