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Gay Nigger Association of America

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Gay Nigger Association of America
Gay Nigger Association of America
Gay Nigger Association of America
AbbreviationGNAA
Formation11 September 2002[1]
TypeInternet trolls
HeadquartersTarzana, Los Angeles, United States[1]
AffiliationsGoatse Security[2][3][4]
Websitegnaa.eu (defunct)

The Gay Nigger Association of America (often referred to as the GNAA) was an anti-blogging and Internet trolling group (a group that likes causing trouble on the Internet). The group takes their name from the 1992 Danish movie Gayniggers from Outer Space, and the words gay and nigger. They have trolled (made trouble for) many popular websites and Internet people. They have trolled many bloggers, and sites including Slashdot, Wikipedia, and CNN. They have also released software and made available secret information about operating systems. In addition, they maintain a wiki-based site that makes fun of Slashdot posts and have a software archive that has many GNAA coding projects.

Members of the GNAA also started Goatse Security, a grey hat computer safety group. Members of Goatse Security told media groups in June 2010 about a problem located on AT&T's website that made the privacy of people who pre-ordered the iPad public.[5] After the mistake in the website was talked about, the then-president of the GNAA, "weev", and GNAA member "JacksonBrown" were arrested by the police.[6]

Beginning and purpose

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The group says that it was started in 2002.[1] There is not much information about the group's structure. Researcher Andrew Lih has said that it is not clear if there was a actual group of GNAA members at the start. Also not known is if the first members of the GNAA were online pranksters who used the name in order to disturb or disrupt websites.[7]

The group's name has been causing trouble (known as trolling) on the Internet, having been described as causing "alarm in anyone with [even a little bit] of good taste",[7] and as being "[amazingly] offensive."[8] However, the group claims that it is neither racist nor homophobic (fear of or hatred of gay people). GNAA members deny it when people say that they are racist. They say that these words are said only to get people to make angry responses and to undermine or challenge long-standing social norms, and say that the name of the group came from the 1992 Danish satirical blaxploitation movie (an exploitation movie made specifically for an urban, black people audience) Gayniggers from Outer Space.[9]

Trolling

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The GNAA uses more than one way of causing damage to the Internet. One way is flooding (making many requests at once) weblogs with a very big amount of words and sentences, called "crapflooding".[9][8] They have also made shocking websites that have malware that infects people who visit the sites.[9] One website, "Last Measure", had malware that opened up pop-up windows that had shocking pictures.[10] On Wikipedia, the group made a page about itself, while following every rule of Wikipedia in order to use the rules against themselves.[7]

They have also attacked many Internet Relay Chat channels using IRC flooding. GNAA used an old but little known way to force users of the Freenode IRC network to flood IRC channels after going to websites that have malware.[11] They also have used bugs in Firefox to crapflood IRC channels.[12] They have also shown people new bugs and problems.[13][14] These actions have sometimes stopped the day-to-day working of big websites such as Slashdot, even making some websites (like 4chan) to shut down for a little bit of time.[15]

In July 2004, two GNAA members sent secret pictures of the future operating system Mac OS X v10.4 to the popular Apple Macintosh news website MacRumors, which read "With WWDC just days away, the first Tiger information and [pictures] appears to have been leaked. [Sources say] Apple [might give our coders] ... a Mac OS X 10.4 preview copy at WWDC on Monday. The [pictures] were [said to have] come from this [future coder sneak-peek]."[16] Later, when people said that the images were fake, the GNAA made a press release which said that the screenshots were real and said that they had "trolled" the Apple websites.[17]

In June 2005, the GNAA said that they had made a Mac OS X Tiger release for Intel x86 processors which made media stories from many sources.[18][19][20] The next day, the suspicious leak and was talked about on the G4 show Attack of the Show.[21] The DVD put on BitTorrent just showed an image of Goatse when you started your computer[22] and not the OS X Tiger as many people were led to believe.[23]

On February 3, 2007, the GNAA tricked CNN reporter Paula Zahn into thinking that "one in three Americans" think that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were done by Israeli agents.[24] CNN then decided to publish a story, not truthfully reporting this, adding pictures of the GNAA-owned website jewsdidwtc.com The story had a round-table talk about people who hate Jews and a talk with the father of a Jewish 9/11 victim.[25] The GNAA-owned website had claims that "over 4,000" Jews were not at work at the World Trade Center on 9/11.[25]

Goatse Security

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Goatse Security logo

Many members of the GNAA with experience in grey hat[26] computer safety research began giving out details about security problems under the name "Goatse Security." Goatse Security takes its name from a shock site called goatse. They chose a new name to publish their work under because they were afraid that their work would not get talked about if given out by the "Gay Nigger Association of America."[27]

In June 2010, Goatse Security got attention from the media for their finding of 114,000 email addresses[5] owned by people who pre-ordered Apple's 3G iPad.[3][28] The data was retrieved from AT&T's own servers. The FBI soon investigated the event. This search for the truth led to the arrest of then-GNAA President,[29] Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, on drug charges that happened because of an FBI search of his house, and were not having anything to do with his hacking.[27][30]

References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "About GNAA". GNAA. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  2. ↑ Emspak, Jesse (2011-01-19). "The Case Against The iPad Hackers". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 2011-01-25. Retrieved 2011-03-19. 14. The Goatse Security website describes defendant Auernheimer as having "[e]xtensive offensive web app vuln and business logic exploitation experience. Bash while drunk, perl while tripping, Ruby while living in SF SoMa. Representing anti sec, Bantown and Encyclopedia Drarnatica. President of the GNAA." Defendant Spitler is described as an "embedded and mobile devices engineer. PPC assembly. GNAA, obviously." The Goatse Security website provides a hyperlink to the GNAA website. 15. The GNAA website states that "[t]his website is maintained by the GNAA, world-famous trolling organization." The GNAA website provides hyperlinks to the Goatse Security website, as well as defendant Auernheimer's LiveJournal weblog.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 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. Weev rails against Jews in his LiveJournal and he and several other members of Goatse Security claim to be members of the Gay N***** Association of America. In an oddly generous literary reference, Forbes has described him as a modern Shakesperian Puck. Make of that what you will.
  4. ↑ 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. "weev", um dos integrantes do grupo, já foi citado em outras matérias do grupo Gawker Media, que deu a notícia como "exclusiva". Ele, assim como outros membros, faz parte da GNAA, a "Associação de Gays Negros da América". São pessoas que passam boa parte do tempo on-line tentando realizar "trotes" ou trolls. Entre os membros do grupo, e um dos principais da GNAA, está um desenvolvedor do Linux Debian. O "ex presidente" da GNAA, timecop, é conhecido na internet por fazer parte do Dattebayo – fãs que realizaram traduções dos desenhos japoneses Naruto e Bleach. Translation: weev, one of the members of the group, has been quoted by Gawker Media, which broke the news as exclusive. He, like other members, is part of the GNAA, the Gay Nigger Association of America. These are people who spend much of their time online trolling and carrying out practical jokes. One of the principal members of the GNAA is a developer of Linux Debian. The ex-president of the GNAA, timecop, is known on the internet for being part of Dattebayo, a group of fans who translated the Japanese cartoons Naruto and Bleach.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Apple's iPad Breach Raises Alarms. NPR. Accessed 2010-09-06.
  6. ↑ Nick Bilton and Jenna Worthan (January 18, 2011). "Two Are Charged With Fraud in iPad Security Breach". New York Times. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Lih, Andrew (17 Mar 2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Cambridge, UK: Hyperion. pp. 170–171. ISBN 978-1400110766. What were some ways to troll and cause trouble? Create an article about something extremely controversial and offensive, but otherwise adhere to every rule of Wikipedia and use the system against itself. This was the case with creating an article that had an intentionally offensive name, the Gay Niggers Association of America. GNAA was a name that caused immediate alarm in anyone with a semblance of good taste. It was a phenomenon for many years in the online tech communities, as legions of trolls attempted to have an article in Wikipedia about the mischievous group. It's not clear a defined group ever existed as GNAA. Supposed GNAA "members" were simply troublemakers online who unified under a common moniker in an effort to disrupt Wikipedia for amusement.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 KIRKPATRICK, STEWART (2005-11-22). "Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Dark side of the rainbow". news.scotsman.com. The Scotsman. Retrieved 2011-03-20. Such people include trolling organisations. These are individuals who delight in flooding web bulletin boards with crass and offensive comments (aka "crapflooding"). One such group goes under the spectacularly offensive name of the "Gay Nigger Association" – revealing themselves to be insecure white kids who have worries about their own orientation.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Dean, Jodi (2010). Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN 9780745649702. Retrieved 2010-08-27. Then I got a comment from the GNAA or Gay Nigger Association of America, a group of organized anti-blogging trolls who take their name from a 1992 Danish movie, Gay-Niggers from Outerspace. GNAA claims that it promotes neither racism nor homophobia but aims rather to sow disruption on the internet. The comment on my blog was a minor instance of their more extensive disruptive practices (like "crapflooding" 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, or producing hoax or shock sites and inserting links or code that redirect viewers to the site).
  10. ↑ Attwood, Feona (2010). Porn.com: making sense of online pornography. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1433102073. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
  11. ↑ Constantin, Lucian (2010-01-30). "Firefox Bug Used to Harass Entire IRC Network". Softpedia. Retrieved 2011-03-17. A group of self-declared Internet trolls, called the GNAA, has used an old but obscure attack method to wreak havoc on the Freenode IRC network. Users were forced to execute IRC commands after visiting maliciously crafted Web pages.
  12. ↑ van der Meijs, Sander (2010-02-01). "Bug in Firefox gebruikt tegen IRC netwerk". Webwereld (in Dutch). IDG Netherlands. Archived from the original on 2012-07-22. Retrieved 2011-03-17. Een groep die zichzelf de GNAA noemt heeft voor grote problemen gezorgd bij een IRC netwerk. Ze gebruikten een bug in Firefox om het netwerk te spammen. Translation: A group that calls itself the GNAA has caused major problems in an IRC network. They used a bug in Firefox for the network to spam.
  13. ↑ Firefox-based attack wreaks havoc on IRC users The Register. Accessed 2010-08-27
  14. ↑ Very Ugly Bug at BarackObama.com. TechCrunch. Accessed 2010-08-27.
  15. ↑ Poole, Christopher. "DING DONG, 4CHAN IS DEAD". 4chan. Retrieved 10 June 2011.
  16. ↑ Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Screenshots? Archived 2011-08-07 at the Wayback Machine. MacRumors. Accessed 2010-08-27.
  17. ↑ "GNAA Leaks Info about Apple's Next Major OS" (Press release). GNAA. June 26, 2004. Archived from the original on 2010-11-18. Retrieved 2010-09-06.
  18. ↑ Report: Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel hits piracy sites Archived 2010-02-02 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 2010-09-06.
  19. ↑ OS X for x86 already in the wild?. Accessed 2010-09-06.
  20. ↑ Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs. Wired. Accessed 2010-09-08.
  21. ↑ "Attack of the Show!". Attack of the Show!. June 2005. G4. G4.
  22. ↑ MacInDell Part Quatre – The Ruby Goldmine Archived 2010-08-08 at the Wayback Machine. Gizmodo. Accessed 2010-08-27.
  23. ↑ Jumping on the bandwagon: OS X on x86! OMG! Archived 2009-08-20 at the Wayback Machine. TUAW. Accessed 2010-09-07.
  24. ↑ Welaratna, Deepthi (2007-04-06). "Terror! Conspiracy! Hoax!". KQED Arts. KQED. Archived from the original on 2011-09-22. Retrieved 2011-03-18. The conspiracy theory – found in crevices on the Internet – claims Jews are behind the 9/11 attacks. Surprise! Farfetched anti-Semitic theories abound online! The actual ugly truth here is that CNN uses the parody conspiracy site jewsdidwtc.com as a LEGITIMATE source for the piece, proof of the legions out there who buy into this theory. A cursory click through the site, aided by a sense of humor, quickly makes it clear that this is a joke site, particularly as it is owned and run by the GNAA (visit at your own peril – contains humor some will find distasteful and NSFW). The blunder made all kinds of news online, on Slashdot, Something Awful and Digg. Mostly saying ha ha, the GNAA trolls CNN. The ultimate troll, LOLZ!! It's true, it's hilarious, but it's also very very sad. Neither Boston nor CNN officials are willing to admit their mistakes
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 "Paula Zahn Now". Paula Zahn Now. February 3, 2007. CNN. CNN.
  26. ↑ Apple's iPad security breach reveals vulnerability of mobile devices. Washington Post. Accessed 2010-09-02.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Kaiser, Leon (2011-01-19). "Interview: Goatse Security on FBI Charges Following AT&T iPad Breach" (Interview). Interviewed by Mick, Jason. Archived from the original (Transcript) on 2014-03-31. Retrieved 2011-01-21.
  28. ↑ "Falha de segurança que expõe donos do iPad investigada pelo FBI". tek (in Portuguese). Sapo.pt. 2010-06-11. Archived from the original on 2011-07-23. Retrieved 2011-03-17. A falha foi identificada pelo grupo Goatse Security, que pertence à GNAA (associação norte americana de gays e negros). Translation: The flaw was identified by the group Goatse Security, which belongs to the GNAA (Gay Nigger Association of America).
  29. ↑ "United States of America v. Daniel Spitler and Andrew Aurenheimer". Archived from the original on 2012-11-06. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  30. ↑ Hacker in AT&T-iPad security case arrested on drug charges Archived 2011-08-10 at the Wayback Machine. CNET. Accessed 2010-09-01.

Other websites

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