If this were true, wouldn't he be able to immediately restore the site to it's original condition?
In the alternative story he has already given notice to quit the existing hosting at the end of this month, and has the site data already transferred in its pre-riot condition on the new host's server (he doesn't have his own colocated server - it's just one rented one or the other). There would be no need for him to bother restoring order on the old one that may only have a few days left to run anyway. Now he's just waiting for the domain to resolve to the new IP.
There is an alternative story developing on another site I frequent that says Walt spent the days between buying the site and announcing himself calmly setting up his new server and transferring all the data. He went off for his 4-day turkey break leaving us to rampage all over the site simply because it didn't matter.
If I had a death wsih, I'd hug Pescado. As it is, I'm defending his honor all over the intertubes like he's a damn damsel. People seem to be buying into the whole DDoS/ISA haxx0rd thing here and there. I know Pescado doesn't care, but I do. It seems so ungrateful after all is said and done.
Private forums are probably exposed to the wrong people more than most people realise. When I was running a particular unmentionable site, one of the moderators shocked me by "emailing a thread to a friend" from the private staff forum (all the moderator actions showed in the log). From that time on, I resolved never to have private forums on my site again, as they're just a entrapment for people to post things they would not want certain people to see, which end up going round, coming back, and biting them on the bum.