Gay Nigger Association of America

Last updated

Gay Nigger Association of America
AbbreviationGNAA
Formation2002;22 years ago (2002) [1]
Type Internet trolls
PurposeTrolling
Affiliations Goatse Security [2] [3] [4]
Websitewww.gnaa.eu

The Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) was an internet trolling group. They targeted several prominent websites and internet personalities including Slashdot , Wikipedia, CNN, Barack Obama, Alex Jones, and prominent members of the blogosphere. They also released software products, and leaked screenshots and information about upcoming operating systems. In addition, they maintained a software repository and a wiki-based site dedicated to internet commentary. [5] [6]

Contents

Members of the GNAA also founded Goatse Security, a grey hat information security group. Members of Goatse Security released information in June 2010 about email addresses on AT&T's website from people who had subscribed to mobile data service using the iPad. After the vulnerability was disclosed, the then-president of the GNAA, weev, and a GNAA member, "JacksonBrown", were arrested. [7]

Origins, known members and name

The group was run by a president. [4] New media researcher Andrew Lih stated that it was unclear whether or not there was initially a clearly defined group of GNAA members, or if founding and early members of the GNAA were online troublemakers united under the name in order to disrupt websites. [8] However, professor Jodi Dean and Ross Cisneros claimed that they were an organized group of anti-blogging trolls. [5] [9] Reporters also referred to the GNAA as a group. [10] [11] [12]

In her 2017 book Troll Hunting, Australian journalist Ginger Gorman identified the president of the GNAA as an individual from Colorado known as "Meepsheep." [13] Known former presidents of the GNAA were security researcher Jaime "asshurtmacfags" Cochran, who also co-founded the hacking group "Rustle League," [14] and "timecop," founder of the anime fansub group "Dattebayo." [13] [15] Other members included former president Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Daniel "JacksonBrown" Spitler, [7] [16] and former spokesman Leon Kaiser. [17] GNAA has also been documented as having been loosely affiliated with the satirical wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica. [13]

The group's name incited controversy and was described as "causing immediate alarm in anyone with a semblance of good taste," "intentionally offensive," [8] and "spectacularly offensive." [10] The group denied allegations of racism and homophobia, explaining that the name was intended to sow disruption on the internet and challenge social norms (claiming it was derived from the 1992 Danish satirical blaxploitation film Gayniggers from Outer Space ). [5] In an interview on the OfFenzive podcast, president Weev recalled an anecdote where the organization did actually once contain a member that was a homosexual black male. [18]

Trolling

The GNAA used many different methods of trolling. One was to simply "crapflood" a weblog's comment form with text consisting of repeated words and phrases. [5] [10] On Wikipedia, members of the group created an article about the group, while adhering to Wikipedia's rules and policies, a process Andrew Lih says "essentially [used] the system against itself." [8] Another method included attacking many Internet Relay Chat channels and networks using different IRC flooding techniques. [19]

The GNAA also produced shock sites containing malware. [5] [20] One such site, "Last Measure," contained embedded malware that opened up "an endless cascade of pop-up windows displaying pornography or horrific medical pictures." [20] [21] They also performed proof of concept demonstrations. [19] [22] These actions occasionally interrupted the normal operation of popular websites.

2000s

In July 2004, two GNAA members submitted leaked screenshots of the upcoming operating system Mac OS X v10.4 [23] to the popular Macintosh news website MacRumors. [24]

In June 2005, the GNAA announced that it had created a Mac OS X Tiger release for Intel x86 processors which caught media attention from various sources. [25] [26] [27] The next day, the supposed leak was mentioned on the G4 television show Attack of the Show. [28] The ISO image released via BitTorrent merely booted a shock image [28] [29] instead of the leaked operating system. [30]

On February 3, 2007, the GNAA successfully managed to convince CNN reporter Paula Zahn that "one in three Americans" believe that the September 11, 2001, terror attacks were carried out by Israeli agents. [31] CNN subsequently ran a story erroneously reporting this, involving a round-table discussion regarding antisemitism and an interview with the father of a Jewish 9/11 victim. [32] The GNAA-owned website said that "over 4,000" Jews were absent from work at the World Trade Center on 9/11. [32]

On February 11, 2007, an attack was launched on the website of US presidential candidate (and future US president) Barack Obama, where the group's name was caused to appear on the website's front page. [33]

2010s

In late January 2010, the GNAA used a then-obscure phenomenon known as cross-protocol scripting (a combination of cross-site scripting and inter-protocol exploitation) to cause users of the Freenode IRC network to unknowingly flood IRC channels after visiting websites containing inter-protocol exploits. [11] They also have used a combination of inter-protocol, cross-site, and integer overflow bugs in both the Firefox and Safari web browsers to flood IRC channels. [12]

On October 30, the GNAA began a trolling campaign in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on the US East Coast, spreading fake photographs and tweets of alleged looters in action. After the GNAA published a press-release detailing the incident, [34] mainstream media outlets began detailing how the prank was carried out. [35] [36]

On December 3, the GNAA was identified as being responsible for a cross-site scripting attack on Tumblr that resulted in thousands of Tumblr blogs being defaced with a pro-GNAA message. [37]

In January 2013, the GNAA collaborated with users on the imageboard 4chan to start a "#cut4bieber" trend on Twitter, encouraging fans of Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber to practice self-harm. [38] [39]

From 2014 into 2015, GNAA members began playing an active role in the Gamergate controversy, sabotaging efforts made by pro-Gamergate parties. Several GNAA members were able to gain administrative access to 8chan's (an imageboard associated with Gamergate) primary Gamergate board, which they disrupted and ultimately closed. The GNAA also claimed responsibility for releasing private information related to many pro-Gamergate activists. [40]

On October 13, 2016, GNAA member Meepsheep vandalized Wikipedia to cause the entries for Bill and Hillary Clinton to be overlapped with pornographic images and a message endorsing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. [41]

In August 2017, GNAA was named as having been involved in a feud between employees of the popular dating app Bumble, and tenants of the apartment building in Austin, Texas where the company was, at the time, illegally headquartered. [42] Joseph Bernstein of BuzzFeed News reported that one of the building's residents contacted GNAA to "fight back" against Bumble after multiple complaints regarding the company's activities were ignored. The dispute resulted in Bumble choosing to relocate from the building, which GNAA claimed credit for in a press release the group spammed across several websites via clickjacking. [42]

Goatse Security

Goatse Security's logo and name are taken from the infamous shock site goatse.cx. Goatse Security Logo.png
Goatse Security's logo and name are taken from the infamous shock site goatse.cx.

Several members of the GNAA with expertise in grey hat [43] computer security research began releasing information about several software vulnerabilities under the name "Goatse Security." The group chose to publish their work under a separate name because they thought that they would not be taken seriously. [16]

In June 2010, Goatse Security attracted mainstream media attention for their discovery of at least 114,000 unsecured email addresses [44] registered to Apple iPad devices for early adopters of Apple's 3G iPad service. [3] [45] The data was aggregated from AT&T's own servers by feeding a publicly available script with HTTP requests containing randomly generated ICC-IDs, which would then return the associated email address. The FBI soon investigated the incident. This investigation led to the arrest of then-GNAA President, [46] Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, on unrelated drug charges [47] resulting from an FBI search of his home. [16] [48]

In January 2011, the Department of Justice announced that Auernheimer would be charged with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud. [49] A co-defendant, Daniel Spitler, was released on bail. [50] [51] In June 2011, Spitler pleaded guilty on both counts after reaching a plea agreement with US attorneys. [52] On November 20, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. [53] These convictions were overturned[ why? ] on April 11, 2014, and Auernheimer was subsequently released from prison. [54]

Related Research Articles

goatse.cx, often spelled without the .cx top-level domain as Goatse, is an internet domain that originally housed an Internet shock site. Its front page featured a picture entitled hello.jpg, showing a close-up of a hunched-over naked man using both hands to stretch open his anus and expose his red rectum lit by the camera flash.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Favicon</span> Icon associated with a particular web site

A favicon, also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons associated with a particular website or web page. A web designer can create such an icon and upload it to a website by several means, and graphical web browsers will then make use of it. Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's address bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks. Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title on the tab, and site-specific browsers use the favicon as a desktop icon.

A grey hat is a computer hacker or computer security expert who may sometimes violate laws or typical ethical standards, but usually does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Hocevar</span> French software and video game developer (born 1978)

Samuel Hocevar is a French software and video game developer. He was the project leader of the Debian operating system from 17 April 2007 to 16 April 2008, and one of the founding members of Goatse Security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anonymous (hacker group)</span> Decentralized hacktivist group

Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.

Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname chat.freenode.net, which load balances connections by using round-robin DNS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Encyclopedia Dramatica</span> Parody-themed wiki website

Encyclopedia Dramatica is an online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google Search in 2010. An administrator of the website was the perpetrator of the 2017 Aztec High School shooting, and users of the site frequently participate in harassment campaigns.

weev Internet troll and hacker (born 1985)

Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, he has been described as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. He has used many aliases when he has contacted the media, but most sources state that his real first name is Andrew.

Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest security conference. First held in April 2007 in Vancouver, the contest is now held twice a year, most recently in March 2024. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software and mobile devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities. Winners of the contest receive the device that they exploited and a cash prize. The Pwn2Own contest serves to demonstrate the vulnerability of devices and software in widespread use while also providing a checkpoint on the progress made in security since the previous year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goatse Security</span> Hacker group

Goatse Security (GoatSec) was a loose-knit, nine-person grey hat hacker group that specialized in uncovering security flaws. It was a division of the anti-blogging Internet trolling organization known as the Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA). The group derives its name from the Goatse.cx shock site, and it chose "Gaping Holes Exposed" as its slogan. The website has been abandoned without an update since May 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LulzSec</span> Hacker group

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Global kOS ('kos' pronounced as chaos) were a grey hat computer hacker group active from 1996 through 2000, considered a highly influential group who were involved in multiple high-profile security breaches and defacements as well as a releasing notable network security and intrusion tools. Global kOS were involved with the media heavily and were interviewed and profiled by journalist Jon Newton in his blog titled "On The Road in Cyberspace" (OTRiCS). The group were reported multiple times to the FBI by Carolyn Meinel who attempted to bring the group to justice while members of Global kOS openly mocked her. The FBI had a San Antonio based informant within the group and individually raided several members after contact with the informant.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, known also by the online pseudonym Sabu, is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the agency for over ten months to aid them in identifying the other hackers from LulzSec and related groups while facing a sentence of 124 years in prison. LulzSec intervened in the affairs of organizations such as News Corporation, Stratfor, UK and American law enforcement bodies and Irish political party Fine Gael.

DigiNotar was a Dutch certificate authority, established in 1998 and acquired in January 2011 by VASCO Data Security International, Inc. The company was hacked in June 2011 and it issued hundreds of fake certificates, some of which were used for man-in-the-middle attacks on Iranian Gmail users. The company was declared bankrupt in September 2011.

UnrealIRCd is an open-source IRC daemon, originally based on DreamForge, and is available for Unix-like operating systems and Windows. Since the beginning of development on UnrealIRCd c. May 1999, many new features have been added and modified, including advanced security features and bug fixes, and it has become a popular server.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tor Ekeland</span> American lawyer

Tor Bernhard Ekeland is a New York City based computer, trial and appellate lawyer. He is best known for representing hackers prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"), as well as white-collar defendants, in federal criminal court and on appeal across the United States.

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcia Hofmann</span> American attorney

Marcia Clare Hofmann is an American attorney and US-UK Fulbright Scholar. Hofmann is known for her work as an advocate of electronic privacy and free expression, including defending individuals charged with high-profile computer crimes, such as Marcus Hutchins and Weev.

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