Andrew Auernheimer

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Andrew Auernheimer, 2010

Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer (born September 1, 1985 in Fayetteville , Arkansas ), better known under his pseudonym "weev", is an American hacktivist , hacker internet troll and right-wing extremist. Auernheimer aroused public interest after he uncovered a security hole in the telecommunications company AT&T and was subsequently imprisoned.

AT&T vulnerability

Auernheimer is a member of a group of computer experts called “Goatse Security”. The group found a bug in the security system of the telecommunications company AT&T, which they then made public. The vulnerability made it possible to see the email addresses of iPad users. The group first reported the vulnerability to the Gawker Media news portal before AT&T was informed. The data of 114,000 iPad users was published. Much of this data pertained to celebrities, as well as government officials and military personnel. The group’s action sparked a public debate about exposing vulnerabilities. Auernheimer himself said that Goatse Security only used common methods and that AT&T itself must be held responsible for their insecure infrastructure. The group considered themselves “the good guys” and just wanted to point out the security flaw. Jennifer Granick of the Electronic Frontier Foundation defended the methods used by Goatse Security.

Investigations

The FBI investigation led to a criminal complaint against Auernheimer in January 2011.

Shortly after the investigation began, Auernheimer's apartment was searched by the FBI and local police. The house search was primarily about the violation of AT&T data security, but Auernheimer was subsequently arrested for alleged drug offenses. Police claimed that while searching Auernheimer's apartment, they found several illegal drugs and prescription drugs. After paying $ 3,160 bail, Auernheimer was temporarily released. During his release, Auernheimer violated a ban on speaking to protest against the violations of civil rights that he believed had been inflicted on him. In particular, he denied the legality of the house search and complained that he had been denied contact with a criminal defense attorney. He asked the public for donations to help pay the court costs.

In January 2011, immediately after Auernheimer's arrest, all charges of alleged drug offenses were dropped. The US Department of Justice announced that Auernheimer would be charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer and fraud in one case each. Although his co-defendant Daniel Spitler was soon released on bail , Auernheimer was initially denied this opportunity because he was unemployed and had no family members who could take him in. He was detained at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City before being released on bail on $ 50,000 in February 2011. In early July 2011, a grand jury in Newark , New Jersey charged Auernheimer with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer and with identity theft. He was released on bail in September 2011, after which he raised additional funds to cover his legal expenses.

accusation

On November 20, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of identity fraud and conspiracy. Auernheimer wrote that he would appeal the charges. On November 29, 2012, Auernheimer wrote an article for the technology magazine Wired that security gaps - so-called " zero-day exploits " - should only be revealed to people who can be sure that they would be exploited for the benefit of social justice .

On March 18, 2013, Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in prison and $ 73,000 in compensation. Shortly before the verdict was announced, Auernheimer wrote on Reddit, among other things, that he had been too nice to AT&T because he gave them time to close the security hole and that next time he would not be so nice. This and other quotations from Auernheimer were used in court to justify the judgment. In March 2013, civil rights attorney Orin Kerr joined Auernheimer's legal team without charging a fee.

Auernheimer was serving his sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution, Allenwood Low , Brady Township, Pennsylvania , with his release scheduled for January 2016. On July 1, 2013, Auernheimer's lawyers filed a pleading arguing that Auernheimer's judgments should be overturned for not violating the relevant provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act .

Reversal of the judgment

On April 11, 2014, the Third District Court of Appeals overturned the verdict because the New Jersey court did not have jurisdiction over the case. While the court did not rule on the legality of Auernheimer's actions, it expressed skepticism towards the verdict, as no evidence was presented during the trial that an authentication procedure had been bypassed . Auernheimer was released from custody on April 11, 2014.

Hacking & Trolling

Auernheimer is a member of the trolling group Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) and was once chairman of the group, in which members of Goatse Security were also involved.

After the sex, dating and swingers portal Adult FriendFinder was hacked and customer information was released, Auernheimer searched the data and used Twitter to publicly identify customers. Auernheimer told CNN that he was targeting government officials because he believed they were the easiest to shame.

From October 2015, Auernheimer and Charles C. Johnson from GotNews specifically searched for the names of government officials who were identified in a data breach on the affair portal Ashley Maddison , and then published their names on Johnson's website gotnews.com .

In March 2016, Auernheimer accessed several thousand unsecured network printers in various American universities so that they could print out flyers with swastikas advertising the news portal The Daily Stormer . Auernheimer claims he used a common tool to search for unsecured printers on the internet. He found over a million unsecured printers. In August 2016, Auernheimer again accessed unsecured network printers in various American companies in order to print out more flyers with swastikas, this time with advertising for his website Samiz.dat. Auernheimer signed this flyer with "weev" and supported the campaign on his Twitter page.

On the album Because the Internet by the rapper Childish Gambino a song was named after Auernheimer with the title "III. Life: The Biggest Troll (Andrew Auernheimer)"

Life After Imprisonment

According to the news portal PandoDaily, Auernheimer lived in Lebanon in 2014 to avoid further prosecutions in America. In 2016, NBCNew reported that Auernheimer lived in a location in Eastern Europe, but his exact whereabouts remained unknown. In a later interview, Auernheimer stated that he lived in Kharkiv in the Ukraine and repeated on Facebook that he lived in Eastern Europe with a valid residency status. In January 2017 Auernheimer told LiveJournal that he was working as a political analyst in Ukraine.

An email leaked from BuzzFeed in October 2017 shows that Auernheimer was in contact with Breitbart News personality Milo Yiannopoulos : Yiannopoulos said Auernheimer was writing an article about the alt-right movement for advice asked. In the email, Yiannopoulos asked the publisher of Breitbart News for permission to invite Auernheimer as a guest on his podcast. The request was rejected on the grounds that they did not want to be associated with a “real racist”.

Political views and criticism

In October 2014, Auernheimer published an article on The Daily Stormer website and advocated White Supremacy . He showed off his tattoos, including a swastika , and wrote about his time in detention.

He published a number of podcasts and operates a LiveJournal - blog , in which he gives comments on cultural issues. His views, which are often perceived as controversial , led the author Philip Elmer-DeWitt to call him the "ugliest computer hacker". The Rolling Stone magazine described some of his hacking actions as racist and homophobic while others his works as offensive and witty interpretations of such. B. Fox News . A Forbes author compared Auernheimer with the puck from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream , an AtlanticMagazine author called the comparison "strangely generous".

In an interview with Red Ice Radio, Auernheimer said: "Africans are superior in Africa, it's not as if the Chinese are not superior in China. Why shouldn't whites be superior in the countries of their ancestors?" Regarding his tattoo, Auernheimer said that Adolf Hitler was not the beginning and the end of the swastika and that the symbol had a deeper European history.

Auernheimer is a proponent of free expression. He defended the satire-wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica in an interview with Ninemsn , which the technology magazine The Register described as "rather brilliant" in an article about internet censorship. Auernheimer's actions are often referred to as hacktivism. Australian media commentator Emma Jane called him a "Celebrity Hacktivist".

Auernheimer showed himself to be a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street protests and said that he himself has a long past in which he has annoyed rich people.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ugly trolls set internet freedom in flames . March 4, 2011 ( com.au [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  2. ↑ AT&T iPad 'hacker' breaks gag order to rant at cops . July 7, 2010 ( theregister.co.uk [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Sophie Curtis: Unmasked: the six hacker 'tribes' you need to avoid . April 29, 2015, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  4. ↑ The Danger of Letting Monsters Pass As Internet Trolls | VICE News . In: VICE News . October 8, 2014 ( vice.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Hacker defends going public with AT & T's iPad data breach (Q&A) . In: CNET . ( cnet.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Sam Biddle: iPad Hacker and "Troll" Weev Is Now a Straight-Up White Supremacist . In: Gawker . February 10, 2014 ( gawker.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Spencer E. Ante, Ben Worthen: FBI Opens Probe of iPad Breach . In: Wall Street Journal . June 11, 2010, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Spencer E. Ante, Ben Worthen: FBI Opens Probe of iPad Breach . In: Wall Street Journal . June 11, 2010, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  9. ↑ Ben Worthen, Spencer E. Ante: Computer Experts Face Backlash . In: Wall Street Journal . June 14, 2010, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  10. ↑ AT&T iPad 'hacker' breaks gag order to rant at cops . July 7, 2010 ( theregister.co.uk [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  11. ↑ a b Ben Worthen, Spencer E. Ante: Computer Experts Face Backlash . In: Wall Street Journal . June 14, 2010, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  12. ↑ Ryan Tate: Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed . In: Gawker . September 6, 2010 ( gawker.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  13. ↑ Andrew Dowell: Programmer Detained After FBI Search . In: Wall Street Journal . June 17, 2010, ISSN  0099-9660 ( wsj.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  14. ↑ Hacker in AT&T iPad security case arrested on drug charges . In: CNET . ( cnet.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  15. ↑ Hypocrites and pharisees "Goatse Security. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  16. ^ Robert McMillan and Joab Jackson: Criminal charges filed against AT&T iPad attackers . In: Computerworld . January 18, 2011 ( computerworld.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  17. ^ ABC News: Technology Index. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  18. ↑ AT&T iPad site hacker to fight on in court (exclusive) . In: CNET . September 12, 2011 ( cnet.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  19. ↑ Kim Zetter: Hacker Found Guilty of Breaching AT&T Site to Obtain iPad Customer Data . In: WIRED . November 20, 2012 ( wired.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  20. ^ Forget Disclosure - Hackers Should Keep Security Holes to Themselves . In: WIRED . November 29, 2012 ( wired.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  21. ↑ Kim Zetter: AT&T Hacker 'Weev' Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Prison . In: WIRED . March 18, 2013 ( wired.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  22. ↑ I am weev. I may be going to prison under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act tomorrow at my sentencing. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer sentenced to 41 months for exploiting AT&T iPad security flaw . In: The Verge . March 18, 2013 ( theverge.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  24. ↑ Jordan Crook: Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer Obtains New Lawyer, Files Appeal . In: TechCrunch . March 22, 2013 ( techcrunch.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  25. ↑ Appellant's Brief Filed in United States v. Auernheimer - The Volokh Conspiracy . In: The Volokh Conspiracy . July 1, 2013 ( volokh.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  26. ↑ Groklaw - Orin Kerr's appeal letter for Andrew "WEEV" Auerheimer - Another CFAA Case ~ pj Updated. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Appeals court reverses hacker / troll “weev” conviction and sentence [Updated] . In: Ars Technica . April 11, 2014 ( arstechnica.com [accessed January 22, 2018]).
  28. ↑ Appeals court reverses hacker / troll “weev” conviction and sentence [Updated] . In: Ars Technica . April 11, 2014 ( arstechnica.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  29. ↑ AT&T Hacker 'Weev' Parties and Tweets as Case Still Looms . In: Bloomberg.com . April 14, 2014 ( bloomberg.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  30. ↑ Niraj Chokshi: Meet One of the Hackers Who Exposed the iPad security leak . In: The Atlantic . June 10, 2010 ( theatlantic.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  31. ↑ Alex Hern: Twitter blocks promoted tweets by notorious white supremacist . In: The Guardian . May 7, 2015, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  32. ↑ David Goldman and Jose Pagliery: Adult dating site hack exposes sexual secrets . In: CNNMoney . May 22, 2015 ( cnn.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  33. ↑ Lisa Brownlee: Ashley Madison Users: Just When You Thought It Was Safe, Hactivist Ups The Ante . In: Forbes . October 9, 2015 ( forbes.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  34. ↑ "WEEV" threatens prosecutors with info from Ashley Madison leaks [Updated] . In: Ars Technica . October 8, 2015 ( arstechnica.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  35. ↑ Hacker 'Weev' Releases Prosecutor's Alleged Ashley Madison Data After Threats . In: Motherboard . October 8, 2015 ( vice.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  36. ↑ Infamous Hacker 'Weev' Says He Blasted College Printers With Antisemitic Message . In: NBC News . March 29, 2016 ( nbcnews.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  37. ^ Neo-Nazi Hacker Distributes Racist Fliers Calling for the Death of Children . In: Southern Poverty Law Center . August 3, 2016 ( splcenter.org [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  38. ↑ Childish Gambino recruits Chance The Rapper, Jhené Aiko and Azealia Banks for Because The Internet LP; see artwork and tracklist - FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music. In: FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music. November 10, 2013 ( factmag.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  39. ↑ 'weev' in Beirut: I can't go home until "most of the agents of the federal government are dead." In: Pando . November 21, 2014 ( pando.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  40. ↑ Infamous Hacker 'Weev' Says He Blasted College Printers With Antisemitic Message . In: NBC News . March 29, 2016 ( nbcnews.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  41. ↑ Interview with alt-right Pepemancer and Kek / Trump supporter, weev | The Alphaville Herald. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  42. ↑ To all my friends in Ukraine: Time grows short, act now. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  43. ^ The beat reporter behind BuzzFeed's blockbuster alt-right investigation . In: Columbia Journalism Review . October 17, 2017 ( cjr.org [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  44. ↑ Sam Biddle: iPad Hacker and "Troll" Weev Is Now a Straight-Up White Supremacist . In: Gawker . October 2, 2014 ( gawker.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  45. ↑ Mattathias Schwartz: Malwebolence - The World of Web trolling . In: The New York Times . August 3, 2008, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  46. ↑ The ugliest computer hacker . In: Fortune . ( cnn.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  47. ^ The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Activists. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  48. ↑ Hacker: I Was Behind Amazon Gay Book Delisting . In: Fox News . April 14, 2009 ( foxnews.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  49. ↑ Niraj Chokshi: Meet One of the Hackers Who Exposed the iPad security leak . In: The Atlantic . June 10, 2010 ( theatlantic.com [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  50. ↑ Red Ice TV: Andrew Auernheimer - Black Hat Hacking: Survival of the West, Syria & #GamerGate - Hour October 1, 28, 2015, accessed on January 12, 2018 .
  51. ↑ Irate Aussies go to US website • The Register. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
  52. ↑ Ugly trolls set internet freedom in flames . March 4, 2011 ( com.au [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  53. ↑ Andrew "WEEV" Auerheimer, hacker case in AT & T iPad, on Occupy Wall Street / Boing Boing. Retrieved January 12, 2018 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Auernheimer, Andrew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Auernheimer, Andrew Alan Escher (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American hacktivist, hacker, and internet troll
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1985
PLACE OF BIRTH Fayetteville , Arkansas