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Anti-Semitic Flyers Sent Remotely To College Campus Printers By Hacker
A well-known computer hacker has claimed responsibility for sending anti-Semitic and racist flyers to public printers nationwide, including college campuses in L.A. county. In late March, network-connected printers and fax machines at USC, Cal State Long Beach and more than a dozen other campuses began printing flyers that promoted a neo-Nazi group, reports CBS Los Angeles.
The flyers—which featured two swastikas—were addressed to "white men," and read "Are you sick and tired of the Jews destroying your country through mass immigration and degeneracy? Join us in the struggle for global white supremacy at the Daily Stormer." The Daily Stormer is considered a neo-Nazi website. In addition to SoCal campuses, the flyers appeared at Princeton, UC Berkeley, Brown University, Smith College, UMass, Amherst and several other schools, as well as numerous private companies.
Andrew Aurenheimer, a known computer hacker that goes by the name of "Weev," has come forward as the sender of the fliers, according to the New York Times. In 2010, Aurenheimer was one of a group of hackers that used a security loophole on AT&T servers to access the data of roughly 114,000 customers. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison for identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization, but his conviction was ultimately overturned on appeal.
Aureheimer told the NY Times in an interview that he sent the flyers to every publicly accessible printer in North America, but did not specifically target college campuses. He told CBS Los Angeles that instead of hacking into the networks, he used printers that were easily accessed from public portals. He told the NY Times that the issue of free speech was behind the mass printing. "My motivation is this: White cultures and only white cultures are subject to an invasion of foreigners," he said.
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According to theDaily Trojan, USC's Department of Public Safety and Information Technology Services is working to better ensure a similar incident cannot occur again, as are other schools that received the flyers, and police are investigating the incidents.
The flyers came soon after the University of California became the first public university system to adopt an official stance that condemns anti-Semitism on campus. However, they stopped short of a broad condemnation of anti-Zionism as a form of discrimination.
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