This 15-year old initially registered himself with many hacker forums, and learnt all hacking tricks and techniques that this forum gave to its members for successful attacks. With this the boy went on to hack many websites and thus started the saga of hacking. Surprisingly, three months later this boy was ranked among 50 hackers of the approximately 2,000 users registered on a particular forum.

The teenager smartly used various hacking tools widely available on the Internet for his attacks, that also included software that helped him maintain his anonymity. Moreover, after every attack he left messages in the systems he hacked, or simply signed them with the hacker name ACK! 3ST.

However, the boy couldn’t play around for a long time as his anonymizing software failed him and eventually he was tracked down with his IP address which was visible to BMI’s C4 (Cyber Crime Competence Centre) unit. Finally, at the end of March the cyber crime unit traced his location to a residence in Lower Austria, and then obtained a search warrant.

“This case shows how vulnerable computer systems are, and how much affinity today's youth have with computers and technology, the interior ministry of Austria said in a statement. The ministry noted that it is often adolescents who try to built their own identity by hacking and warned that youths could easily become offenders. The actions in this case might look like a prank, but are not minor offenses, the ministry warned,” reports PC World

Authorities said they could not detail the damage ACK!3STX caused, because their investigation is still ongoing. Europol is trying to quantify his attacks both at home and abroad.