FBI Seizes Miley Hacker's Hardware

Agents raid Josh Holly's Tennessee apartment in connection with racy Cyrus pics he posted in August

By Natalie Finn, Whitney English Oct 21, 2008 11:26 PMTags
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You don't mess with Miley Cyrus and expect no one to notice.

The Tennessee apartment of Josh Holly, the admitted hacker who bragged about breaking into Cyrus' old email account and posting racy pictures of the teen star online, was raided Monday morning in connection with his alleged dirty deeds, reports Wired.com's Threat Level blog.

The FBI did not immediately return calls for comment, but Cyrus' attorney, William Sobel, tells E! News, "This is an ongoing investigation and we appreciate the efforts of the FBI."

Agents, armed with a thick file on Holly's recent online activities, served the 19-year-old Monday morning in Murfreesboro, Tenn., with a search warrant and a list of items they were looking for. They ultimately seized three of Holly's computers and his phone, but no arrest was made. No charges have been filed to date.

"I guess somebody ended up ratting me out," Holly told Threat Level. "I was just kind of shaking. I was thrown way off guard. I've never had anything like this happen before to a point that I just didn't know what to do. I was afraid to kick them out of my house."

In August, Holly posted pictures on his blog of Cyrus in various states of half-dress, including one in which the Hannah Montana star is posing in a wet, white T-shirt in her shower and another showing her leaning over in front of a mirror while blowing a kiss at the camera. 

There were no takers, as far as cashing in was concerned, but after he aired the pics, a number of celeb-gossip sites took the liberty of republishing them for free.

Holly called in Aug. 6 to radio station KKFR in Phoenix, Ariz., using one of his screen names, Trainreq, to identify himself and boasted about how easy it was to hack into people's accounts. 

Holly wrote on his blog, "I was thinking about not leaking them cause I felt bad. But the demand for me to leak them was stronger than the demand and begs of people not to leak them. I really do feel bad for leaking the pictures due to the fact that she is rising and she is trying to be a role model for the younger crowd, but I have to give what the people want."

Despite his actions, Holly wrote that he was not trying to hurt Cyrus with the pictures. "I want to clear up that I DO NOT hate miley. The reason I leak these is because that's what people want to see.  I feel kinda bad, cause I do know I kinda messed up her career a little."

(He shouldn't worry too much about that.)

Holly's Myspace page states: "I love to mess around with internet security while I am at home."