Yesterday we reported on a post from Goatse Security, the group which hacked and harvested over 100,000 email addresses from AT&T’s 3G iPad network, in which a member by the name of “Rucas” defended the actions of his recently arrested friends, Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer. While that post makes Spitler and Auernheimer’s actions seem noble in their intent, the criminal complaint filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows another, darker side of Auernheimer.
The criminal complaint, filed by FBI special agent Christian Schorle, excerpts alleged incriminating IRC chat transcripts between Goatse Security members, as well as listing several of Auernheimer’s “trolling activities”.
Among these activities that Auernheimer apparently admitted to taking part in are:
- An August 3, 2008 interview with The New York Times, in which Auernheimer admitted: "I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money. I make people afraid for their lives. Trolling is basically Internet eugenics. I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards.... We need to put these people in the oven!"
- An interview with the website Corrupt in August 2008, in which Auernheimer stated: "The security industry does not work against hackers. Security is a myth, there is no system that cannot be broken .... For the companies I've targeted, I've showed up at their parties and given some friendly greetings to bask in the looks of disgust and disdain. I take credit and responsibility for my actions."
- “Sermons” under the name “iProphet”. In one, Auernheimer stated that, “Trolling can frequently have large economic repercussions as, as I learned, I learned when I trolled Amazon. I saw a one billion dollar change in their market capitalization. That's the most monetary affection [sic] of a publicly traded stock that I've ever personally done… a billion dollars changed hands as a result of my trolling, and I'm very, very glad to know that such insignificant things on the Internet can have drastic, far reaching effects."
In addition, one IRC chat log shows Spitler and someone by the name of Nstyr, debating about whether the harvested AT&T customer emails could be sold to spammers for profit. Another shows a conversation between Spitler and Auernheimer, where Spitler asks, “If I can get a couple thousand out of this set [the AT&T customer email addresses] where can we drop this for max lols?”
In a world where large corporations have a tendency to overlook individual good will for the sake of political interests and monetary gain, we often find it natural to side against the corporation. Unfortunately, in this case, it is difficult to overlook the trolling and other unsavory activities by the members of Goatse Security which are all too apparent just by conducting a few internet searches.
