
Hacker Says He Printed Anti-Semitic and Racist Fliers at Colleges Across U.S. - JamilD
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/nyregion/hacker-weev-says-he-printed-anti-semitic-and-racist-fliers-at-colleges-across-us.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=5&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F03%2F29%2Fnyregion%2Fhacker-weev-says-he-printed-anti-semitic-and-racist-fliers-at-colleges-across-us.html
======
newjersey
> “When it was happening to black students, it was a matter of free speech,”
> he said. “Now that it’s happening to white, Jewish students, it’s something
> else. There seems to be no conflation of hate speech and free speech now.”

While I disagree with the calls to remove signs of our past like the
ridiculous calls "for the removal of President Woodrow Wilson’s name from the
campus because of his racist positions", I think that Asanni York has a point
that free speech is free speech. The race/gender/whatever of the accused
should not matter.

I'd like to draw attention to the "white only" sign on a bathroom door in
SUNY. Because it was a black female who did it, it was called art. Had it been
a white male, it would have been called hate crime. We can clearly do better
than this.

As far as unauthorized use of campus resources, I think the university would
be better served by suing AT&T for failing to adequately protect its network.

> Mr. Auernheimer said he did not hack into the printers, but activated them
> using remote access.

Or maybe universities and organizations could teach their employees to handle
network security better. I don't think this is grounds for a criminal case.

Oh, on what I hope is an unrelated note we should use this opportunity to
voice our dissent against the CFAA and judicial reform especially when it
comes to selectively overzealous prosecution.

~~~
21
>> Mr. Auernheimer said he did not hack into the printers, but activated them
using remote access.

> Or maybe universities and organizations could teach their employees to
> handle network security better. I don't think this is grounds for a criminal
> case.

Actually it is. If you try my car/house door and it's unlocked it doesn't mean
you can enter it.

That being said, a fine would be appropriate in this case since minimal harm
was done.

~~~
biot

      > If you try my car/house door and it's unlocked it doesn't
      > mean you can enter it.
    

If you have a publicly available web server and I make a "GET /" request on
it, am I hacking? If you have a publicly available print server and I make a
"PRINT flyer.pdf" request to it, am I hacking?

~~~
wfo
Interestingly enough the person the article about was convinced and jailed for
making GET requests on publicly available websites, because he knew he did not
have permission to access them.

I think a print server at a university is pretty obviously not fair game. If
you forget to lock up your business overnight and someone walks in and prints
off a couple thousand pages using your printer it's definitely illegal.

~~~
biot
Yeah, I made an analogy 3 years ago when the Weev case came up:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6435092)
contrasting a publicly accessible web server with a librarian at a public
library.

Your "forget to lock up your business overnight" scenario isn't a useful
analogy since entering that business would be at least trespass and possibly
breaking and entering (no physical breaking needs to occur), so anything after
that obviously is a result of exceeding access.

Riffing off of my older analogy, if I entered a library and asked the
librarian "Can you please print flyer.pdf?" and the librarian did so, is that
"obviously not fair game"?

To be clear, I'm considering only the act of printing rather than the contents
of the flyer; it could be a single pixel or the word "LOVE". I suspect that
this is ultimately some sort of mischief since it's unlikely he had any plans
to travel to each location to pick up the output, but I'm having a hard time
seeing how this is hacking.

~~~
wfo
I think a better analogy would be if a library accidentally placed a paper
copy of their members' records in the library alongside the books, you found
it, and instead of informing the library of the horrible mistake you took it
over to the library photocopy machine and made a copy for yourself and showed
it to everyone to humiliate the library for their mistake.

Or if the printer was in a locked room in the back of a library, to be opened
only with a keycard, and said "employees only" and you found out that the
keycard didn't work quite right so you could walk right in and use it.

It doesn't matter how easy the hack is. If you use someone else's machine in a
way that hasn't been made publicly available AND it is public common knowledge
that what you are doing is against the wishes of the people who own the
hardware then it's illegal and immoral. If a bank exposes monetary transfer
functionality by way of a public http GET request it's very stupid but it's
still very illegal to use it to steal money from people.

~~~
biot
A publicly accessible, internet-connected printer is almost directly analogous
to a fax machine that you can phone, transmit a document, and have it print
out on the other side. Maybe you intend the phone number to only be called by
certain people, but the default behavior will be for the fax machine to accept
calls from anybody in the world. So it is for a printer with a public IP
address. Sending faxes in this manner (without prior business relationship;
not respecting opt-out, etc.) is an FCC violation; it's not hacking. Why would
printing be any different?

I agree with you on the ethics/morality of it all.

------
popctrl
Wait, I'm confused...Maybe I'm not reading this right?

Some white kids perform in loin clothes and the university defends it as free
speech.

Some dick prints a bunch of racist fliers, and the university takes action to
block any more from being printed.

Then we get this: “When it was happening to black students, it was a matter of
free speech,” he said. “Now that it’s happening to white, Jewish students,
it’s something else. There seems to be no conflation of hate speech and free
speech now.”

How is it racist for the school to stop neo-nazi fliers from being printed?
What was "happening to black students" when some white guys danced in loin
clothes? I hope I'm reading this wrong...I don't want the world to be this
stupid.

~~~
001spartan
Weev is a well-known white supremacist. I would take anything he says with a
hefty portion of salt.

~~~
pakled_engineer
He claims to be a white nationalist not a supremacist. He's helped the daily
stormer site before like when somebody jacked their domain.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
The difference between a 'white nationalist' and a 'white supremacist' is as
meaningful as the difference between a trilby and a fedora.

~~~
pakled_engineer
There's a difference, just like there is in Turk nationalist groups vs Turk
supremacy groups (Grey Wolves). One believes they are genetically superior to
all others and chosen to rule earth, and can excuse mass murder because they
don't see anybody else as human. These groups are extremely dangerous and
responsible for the holocaust and genocides in Africa. North Korean juche
ideology is also supremist.

The other is a racist nationalist "pride" group that does not believe they are
genetically superior like Weev, the Black Nationalist Panthers, ect. For the
record I don't subscribe to either ideology but have met plenty of these
groups unfortunately.

------
lhnz
1\. It's the administrator's responsibility to ensure that printers are not
exposed to the public internet.

Not doing so is giving 'weev' and others like him a platform to cause mayhem
and to further split people across racial lines. I don't know if that's what
he's trying to achieve, but I suspect it is.

2\. If he's able to further agitate african-americans he is able to widen the
gulf between people in racially diverse universities and create an environment
prone to more and more hatred. And if he can entice law enforcement into
prosecuting him he can then play the part of uber troll and free-speech martyr
for his supporters.

The reactions so far play into his hand as high-scale racial aggravation sows
discord that he may be able to capitalise on long-term.

I hope it's just trolling as if it is political terraforming it is worrying.
What I just described is probably nothing to worry about as it is just one
event and it's very likely impossible to orchestrate systemic changes in the
way I described.

------
afreak
It should be noted that what weev was doing is nothing new and is really just
this:

$ cat payload.ps |netcat -q 0 $printer_ip 9100

This is what was originally posted:

[https://storify.com/weev/a-small-experiment-
in](https://storify.com/weev/a-small-experiment-in)

~~~
mikeash
Thanks, this is a much better link than the mostly content-free NYT article.

This guy is a real piece of work, sneaking offensive Nazi stuff into random
places and then laughing when people get offended. It's basically the Internet
version of throwing a punch at someone and then making fun of them for
flinching, but with more wasted paper.

Edit: it seems he actually believes the offensive stuff he printed. I just
assumed it was chosen because it would offend people the most. I don't know if
that makes it better or worse.

~~~
untog
I'd argue it's actually an IRL manifestation of some of the worst stuff that
has been going on all over the web for a long time. As such, the content is
really any different, but it's a lot more noticeable.

~~~
6stringmerc
That's a pretty good point. A lot of people love to get online and join into
'divisive' stuff by way of anonymity. That's not the Weev style. He is, in my
estimation, a textbook example of what was meant by the phrase "I disapprove
of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" in the
context of the US. The guy certainly knows how to test the bounds of what is
or is not criminal, according to the current laws and whatnot.

------
screwedup
If you don't feel like reading the article: the guy wasn't printing bigoted
content just to bring attention to the lack of security on printers, he seems
to actually believe in this stuff.

~~~
S_A_P
I skimmed the article, didnt see anything where he was mentioning that he
endorsed the subject other than the implicit endorsement by sending it in the
first place. The dudes a troll, of course nazi propaganda is going to create
the urge for internet justice, which is probably one of few things that would
get people tweeting about it from their high horses.

~~~
untog
The article doesn't go into detail, but weev literally has a swastika tattoo
on his chest:

[http://gawker.com/ipad-hacker-and-troll-weev-is-now-a-
straig...](http://gawker.com/ipad-hacker-and-troll-weev-is-now-a-straight-up-
white-1641763761)

If he's just trolling then he's really, really dedicated to the cause.

~~~
S_A_P
To be honest, I don't know or care enough about him to really research if he
truly feels that way. From my semi informed viewpoint, I see where he could
see it as a sort of Andy Kaufman style of trolling. He could be just picking a
topic that he knows most "normal" people would be outraged about because if he
wants to know how well his printer hack worked, a penis enlargement pill or
public service announcement would get ignored by the recipients. The dude is
toying with people's emotions for his own amusement, just narcissistic
behavior.

~~~
untog
But when the _only thing_ he trolls about is white supremacy, what do we have
to back that up? All we can really do is look at things at face value.

------
pakled_engineer
At least it was Weev triggering campuses from his hideout in Sarajevo and not
phony bank or other fishing printouts to steal money or identities.

Throw out the racist propaganda and close those accessible printer ports with
a cheap OpenBSD $40 appliance firewall any first year student can set up.
Media is just helping Weev spread his message and marketing for that
dailystormer site.

~~~
FilterSweep
>Media is just helping Weev spread his message

I feel like more attention should be brought to this, and a greater onus put
on the media for "enabling" such behavior.

This thought first occurred to me when The Rolling Stone put a glamor shot of
Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber, on its cover.

In the click/eyes-driven world we live in, the line between fame and infamy is
increasingly blurred

IMHO, more accountability needs to be placed on the media. Of course, a story
needs to be "sold" to keep publications alive - so I wouldn't be opposed to
putting a pseudonym attributed to the criminal that doesn't use his/her actual
name in the print.

------
6stringmerc
Rarely have I been so conflicted in my deep-seated love of watching
rebelliousness towards authority and hegemonic institutions, and my utter
dislike of Weev as a human being able to convey his thoughts to others. I'm
pretty serious, in that I can tell he's got a legit point with a lot of his,
um, 'activities' and yet the presentation is about as appetizing as ipecac.
Or, as The Dude once noted about a close associate, "You're not wrong, Walter,
you're just an asshole."

~~~
geofft
I'm not entirely sure white supremacism (and it seems to be earnest white
supremacism) is actually rebelliousness towards authority / hegemony. Like,
I'm no fan of authority, but I don't think I would have supported Robert E.
Lee's fight against authority.

~~~
6stringmerc
Oh I wasn't referencing that bit, the white supremacist stuff - I mean the
exposing security flaws and basically pointing the finger at the victims for
'allowing' him to get access. That kind of flipping-off authority is
interesting to me. The white supremacist stuff is definitely on the other side
of the equation, in that his methods and beliefs are categorically opposed to
nearly all of mine. I could see the merit in Aaron Schwartz's JSTOR anti-
authority issue, Weev doesn't appear to ever get close to that kind/brand/vein
of idealism, so to speak.

~~~
yedava
How is exposing security flaws "rebelliousness"? If an University forgets to
lock the doors of its offices and some "troll" walks in and drops racist
fliers, which specific hegemonic structure is being fought against?

~~~
geofft
Fight the power! Encourage people to set appropriate access controls on their
printers! Stick it to the man and encourage him to use proper security!

------
justinpombrio
Apparently if you leave a printer open on the Internet for anyone to print to,
sometimes neo-Nazi propaganda will come out of it.

------
mark-ruwt
More on weev. This isn't new.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-
kindnes...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-
weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man)

------
rm_-rf_slash
Real shame. Every side of these issues has legitimate grievances, but when
heavy-handed measures like this are taken, all it does is alienate the
"other", stifle communication, and reduces discussion to echo chambers and
simple stereotypes.

------
SCAQTony
If you have ad blockers you cannot read the article. If WIRED wants to hard
code ads I will look at them and sometimes click. I don't want trackers,
beacons and such and it is those items I am blocking; not their ads.

------
ipsin
Now that he's posted a confession, I'm sure prosecutors will be firing up
their printers in the next few days. I'm not sure what it'll be: malicious
mischief (for the paper), some kind of misappropriation of resources charge,
or something else, but I'd be surprised if charges are not laid.

[Edited to add: Hadn't realized he'd left the U.S.]

~~~
sp332
A class-action lawsuit for $0.02 for each defendant and $6MM for the laywers.

------
Jgrubb
With the "bad hacker" spotlight on him already, why would he do something like
this?

~~~
vox_mollis
Because he lives in an Eastern European country that would be hesitant to
comply with an extradition request over something that doesn't even clear the
bar of the CFAA?

~~~
jessaustin
weev would love nothing more than for some moron federal prosecutor to try
that. They would surely lose, which would give him the lead, weev: 2, feds: 1.
(Since he did go to prison, I count the first trial for the feds, even though
the charges were ridiculous and the appeals court threw the whole thing out.
The appeal, of course, counts for weev.)

------
jessaustin
The shitty security on university printers was probably intentional. Paying
for printing sucks, only lusers do that. Post printing instructions for the
general student population that cause them to pay for their prints. If in
addition one also leaves an obvious but plausibly deniable alternative like
this, then all us 1337 haxxors can print for free.

------
supremeanger
Sam Hyde and Weev are a gang of neonazi trolls who will stop at nothing to
cause problems

