The University of California at Berkeley fell victim to the downside of the Internet of Things, and now an infamous black-hat hacker – or shall we say “white-hood hacker” – has taken credit for a stream of racist, anti-Semitic vitriol that spewed out of campus printers. Andrew Auernheimer also explained how he accessed the printers, which like thousands upon thousands of electronic “things” connected to the Internet were poorly secured.
Staff in a number of U.C. Berkeley departments reported last week that their office printers had spit out swastika-emblazoned flyers blaming Jews for destroying the country, calling on white men to join the “struggle for white supremacy,” and referring interested parties to a neo-Nazi website with the motto “Total Fascism.”
Now, Auernheimer has posted material online saying he used an online service called “Masscan” that scours the internet for open ports of entry into computerized devices. He wrote on Storify that more than a million printers were openly connected to the Internet.
“I thus embark upon a quest to deliver emotionally compelling content to other people’s printers,” Auernheimer wrote.
The red-bearded Auernheimer goes by the online nickname “Weev” and reportedly claims both Jewish ancestry and a conversion to Mormonism. He served time in prison after being convicted of stealing in 2010 the private information of 114,000 iPad users – including Congresspeople and senators, employees of NASA and the departments of justice and homeland security, and celebrities. Some of the information was given to gossip website Gawker. The hacker served time in prison before his sentence was overturned on a technicality.
To get the open printers to cough up his flyers, Auernheimer sent them postscript code, he wrote. At U.C. Berkeley, staff reported the appearance of the flyers, posting messages on an open IT mailing list site, and generating discussion about the security problem that allowed Auernheimer’s hack. Cal security supervisor Allison Henry suggested school staff brush up on security protocols and “put measures in place to restrict access to printers from the public internet.” University police were notified.
Printers at more than a dozen U.S. universities spat out Auernheimer’s flyers.
Photo: Selfie by hacker Andrew Auernheimer (Wikimedia Commons)
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