If the attack took place in mid 2007, why in God's name did the idiot keep evidence lying around until March 2008? Why didn't he quietly erase all copies of the bot from all systems under his control? Was he really that much of a retard?

"Was he really that much of a retard?"

Yes. He was.

Some people don't understand that you can't so easily get rid of files off a flash drive.

If you delete them, they can still be recovered as was already known about many kinds of media but with flash memory even if you try to overwrite the file you have no reasonable expectation that typical overwriting software will circumvent the wear-leveling of the flash controller. It'll do what appears to be overwriting then simply re-reading all sectors later the data may be retrieved unless the flash drive is either destroyed or filled with enough data to be sure the old was overwritten.

Even then someone will come along and say there are ways to detect what was previously written but in the real world such measures are more of a theory based on simple principles, not a working viable method if the data was actually overwritten on flash.

The better question is why was the bot ever stored on any media the perpetrator had at all without strong encryption. There was no assurance that days or weeks, letalone several months later would be a period available to dispose of the evidence. Feds don't generally give advanced warning before the knock on the door in the wee morning hours.

Why did he _still_ have the damn flash drive _months_ later? Why didn't he just drop it into a shredder or an incinerator or just into the nearest large body of water? Why didn't he, well, go out into the bloody woods and dig a hole and drop it, and any other evidence, in there? If it was me, all of that stuff would have been bloody gone two bloody seconds after the DDoS attack went out.

Damn but that boy was a retard.

The entire point of this story screams "Look at me!", yet he didn't think that someone might, you know... look at him?

All because he got caught exchanging some phrases of questionable morality with some he _thought_ was a girl... but didn't bother doing anything to confirm it.

Paris - because even if she is fake, she is still all woman.