A 19-year-old hacker who published provocative photos of teen queen Miley Cyrus earlier this year was raided by the FBI Monday morning in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

The hacker, Josh Holly, repeatedly bragged online about breaking into the Disney star’s e-mail account and stealing her photos. He also gave interviews to bloggers and others and boasted that authorities would never find him because he moved so often.

But this morning the FBI did find him and, after talking with him for more than an hour about his exploits, served him with a search warrant and a list of items to be seized (which was posted at the hacking site digitalgangster.com after Holly showed it to a friend).

When agents finally left his apartment after conducting an extensive search, they had three computers and Holly’s phone, among other things. Hours after the raid, Holly phoned Threat Level from his sister’s phone to report what had occurred. He hasn’t been arrested or charged with a crime yet.

Last December, Holly, who went by the screen names “TrainReq,” “Rockz” and “h4x,” obtained access to a Gmail account Cyrus had once used (messagemebaby@gmail.com) and found images the Hannah Montana actress had purportedly sent to singer Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers.

Holly told Threat Level he tried to sell the pictures to TMZ.com and other celebrity outlets, but no one would buy them, given the illegal manner by which he’d obtained them. He then posted some of them online at digitalgangster.com, after which numerous gossip and celebrity websites published them for free. More photos followed thereafter.

The FBI in Tennessee did not respond to a call for comment. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee, where the warrant was obtained, said it would not confirm or deny that a search had occurred.

source: [wired]