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Gay Nigger Association of America

Logo
Abbreviation	GNAA
Type	Internet trolls
Affiliations	Goatse Security
Website	Official website

The Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) is an Internet trolling organization. They have trolled several prominent websites and Internet personalities including Slashdot, Misplaced Pages, CNN, Barack Obama's campaign website, and prominent members of the blogosphere. They have also released software products and leaked screenshots and information about upcoming operating systems. In addition, they maintain a wiki-based site dedicated to Internet commentary and a software repository.

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 pre-ordered the iPad. After the vulnerability was disclosed, the then-president of the GNAA, weev, and GNAA member "JacksonBrown" were arrested.

Origins and name

The group is run by a president, but little else is known about its internal structure. New media researcher Andrew Lih has stated that it is 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. However, professor Jodi Dean and MIT graduate Ross Cisneros states that they are an organized group of anti-blogging trolls. Reporters also refer to the GNAA as a group.

The former president of the GNAA, known as "timecop", is known for founding the anime fansub group "Dattebayo". Other members include former president Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, Daniel "JacksonBrown" Spitler, and former Debian project head Sam Hocevar.

The group's name has been controversial, having been described as causing "immediate alarm in anyone with a semblance of good taste", and as being "intentionally offensive", and "spectacularly offensive". The group says that its name is intended to sow disruption on the internet, claiming it was derived from the 1992 Danish satirical blaxploitation film Gayniggers from Outer Space.

Trolling

The GNAA has used many different methods of trolling. One method involves flooding a weblog's comment form with a massive amount of repeated words and phrases, referred to as "crapflooding". On Misplaced Pages, members of the group created an article about the group, while still adhering to Misplaced Pages's rules and policies; a process Andrew Lih says was "essentially using the system against itself." Another method includes attacking many Internet Relay Chat channels and networks using different IRC flooding techniques.

The GNAA has also produced shock sites containing malware. One such site, "Last Measure", contains embedded malware that opens up "an endless cascade of pop-up windows displaying pornography or horrific medical pictures." They have also performed proof of concept demonstrations. These actions have 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 to the popular Apple Macintosh news website MacRumors, resulting in a post which read "With WWDC just days away, the first Tiger information and screenshots appears to have been leaked. According to sources, Apple will reportedly provide developers with a Mac OS X 10.4 preview copy at WWDC on Monday. The screenshots provided reportedly come from this upcoming developer preview."

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. The next day, the supposed leak and was mentioned on the G4 television show Attack of the Show. The ISO image released via BitTorrent merely booted a shock image instead of the leaked operating system.

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. 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. The GNAA-owned website said that "over 4,000" Jews were absent from work at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

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.

2010s

In late January 2010 the GNAA used an obscure method, 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 crapflood IRC channels after visiting websites containing inter-protocol exploits. They also have used a combination of inter-protocol, cross-site, and integer overflow bugs in both the Firefox and Safari web browsers to crapflood IRC channels.

Goatse Security

Several members of the GNAA with expertise in grey hat 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 felt that they would not be taken seriously.

In June 2010, Goatse Security attracted mainstream media attention for their discovery of at least 114,000 unsecured email addresses registered to Apple iPad devices for early adopters of Apple's 3G iPad service. 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, Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, on unrelated drug charges resulting from an FBI search of his home.

In January 2011 the Department of Justice announced that Auernheimer will be charged with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud. A co-defendant, Daniel Spitler, was released on bail. As of August 2012 both men remain released on bail.

Notes

1. "Crapflooding" is the practice of overwhelming a site with "a massive amount of text or data with no meaning or relevance: for example, a word, phrase, or group of letters repeated over and over." (Dean, 2010)

References

1. Emspak, Jesse (2011-01-19). "The Case Against The iPad Hackers". International Business Times. Retrieved 2011-03-19.
2. ^ Chokshi, Niraj (2010-06-10). "Meet One of the Hackers Who Exposed the iPad Security Leak". The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
3. ^ Rohr, Altieres (2010-06-11). "Saiba como ocorreu falha que expôs e-mails de 114 mil usuários do iPad". Rede Globo (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2010-09-13.
4. ^ Dean, Jodi (2010). Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-4970-2. Retrieved 2010-08-27. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
5. "FreeNode, allarme sicurezza". PuntoInformatico (in Italian). 2006-06-28. Retrieved 2011-08-26.
6. ^ Lih, Andrew (17 Mar 2009). The Misplaced Pages Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Cambridge, UK: Hyperion. pp. 170–171. ISBN 1-4001-1076-9. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
7. Cisneros, Ross B. (2005). Regarding Evil (S.M.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
8. ^ KIRKPATRICK, STEWART (2005-11-22). "Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Dark side of the rainbow". scotsman.com. The Scotsman. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
9. ^ Constantin, Lucian (2010-01-30). "Firefox Bug Used to Harass Entire IRC Network". Softpedia. Retrieved 2011-03-17.
10. ^ van der Meijs, Sander (2010-02-01). "Bug in Firefox gebruikt tegen IRC netwerk". Webwereld (in Dutch). IDG Netherlands. Retrieved 2011-03-17.
11. ^ Mick, Jason (2011-01-19). "Interview: Goatse Security on FBI Charges Following AT&T iPad Breach". DailyTech. Retrieved 2011-01-21.
12. Bilton, Nick; Wortham, Jenna (19 January 2011). "Two Are Charged With Fraud in iPad Security Breach". The New York Times. p. 4.
13. Christian Perrier (2 Feb 2006) "Sam Hocevar et le superbe t-shirt GNAA" perrier.eu.org
14. ^ Firefox-based attack wreaks havoc on IRC users The Register. Accessed 2010-08-27
15. ^ Porn.com: making sense of online pornography. Peter Lang. 2010. ISBN 1-4331-0207-2. Retrieved 2011-03-20. {{cite book}}: |first1= missing |last1= (help)
16. Jones, Dr. Steve (2011). "Horrorporn/Pornhorror: The Problematic Communities and Contexts of Online Shock Imagery" (PDF). Retrieved August 26, 2012.
17. Very Ugly Bug at BarackObama.com. TechCrunch. Accessed 2010-08-27.
18. "Wie typisch". giga.de. 2004-06-28. Retrieved 2011-08-26.
19. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Screenshots?. MacRumors. Accessed 2010-08-27.
20. Report: Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel hits piracy sites. Accessed 2010-09-06.
21. OS X for x86 already in the wild?. Accessed 2010-09-06.
22. Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs. Wired. Accessed 2010-09-08.
23. ^ "Attack of the Show!". Attack of the Show!. June 2005. G4. G4.
24. MacInDell Part Quatre – The Ruby Goldmine. Gizmodo. Accessed 2010-08-27.
25. Jumping on the bandwagon: OS X on x86! OMG!. TUAW. Accessed 2010-09-07.
26. Welaratna, Deepthi (2007-04-06). "Terror! Conspiracy! Hoax!". KQED Arts. KQED. Retrieved 2011-03-18.
27. ^ "Paula Zahn Now". Paula Zahn Now. February 3, 2007. CNN. CNN. {{cite episode}}: External link in |transcripturl= (help); Unknown parameter |transcripturl= ignored (|transcript-url= suggested) (help)
28. Very Ugly Bug at BarackObama.com
29. Apple's iPad security breach reveals vulnerability of mobile devices. Washington Post. Accessed 2010-09-02.
30. Apple's iPad Breach Raises Alarms. NPR. Accessed 2010-09-06.
31. "Falha de segurança que expõe donos do iPad investigada pelo FBI". tek (in Portuguese). Sapo.pt. 2010-06-11. Retrieved 2011-03-17.
32. United States District Court — District Court of New Jersey, Docket: MAG 11-4022 (CCC)]. Filed with the court 13 January 2011
33. Richard Torrenzano, Mark W. Davis (2011). Digital Assassination: Protecting Your Reputation, Brand, Or Business. Macmillan. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-312-61791-2.
34. Hacker in AT&T-iPad security case arrested on drug charges. CNET. Accessed 2010-09-01.
35. McMillan, Robert and Jackson, Joab (January 18, 2011). "Criminal charges filed against AT&T iPad attackers — Computerworld". Computerworld.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
36. Voigt, Kurt (21 January 2011). "No bail for 2nd iPad e-mail address theft suspect". MSNBC.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 15 February 2011. {{cite news}}: More than one of |work= and |newspaper= specified (help)
37. Porter, David (28 February 2011). "Suspect in iPad Data Theft Released on Bail in NJ". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2 March 2011. {{cite news}}: More than one of |work= and |newspaper= specified (help)

External links

• Official website

• Internet trolling