(Photo: Crimint.com)

Andrew Auernheimer, better known by his pseudonym "weev," was sentenced today to 41 months in prison for exploiting an AT&T security flaw that allowed him to collect and publish the email addresses of 114,000 AT&T iPad owners. He alerted AT&T to the flaw before sending the dataset to Gawker, which published it, leading to an FBI investigation.

Mr. Auernheimer is part of the grey hat hacker collective Goatse Security, a division of the Gay Nigger Association of America, recently responsible for trolling the Daily Mail and unleashing a torrent of malicious spam on Tumblr. Back in November, Mr. Auernheimer was found guilty of "one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization" for his participation in Goatse Security's AT&T hack.

The case is a controversial one, as Goatse Security didn't technically have to hack anything to obtain the information--they simply were exploiting a security flaw with AT&T. Still, Mr. Auernheimer must serve approximately 3.5 years in jail with three years of supervised release and a $73,000 fine to be paid to AT&T for damages (because AT&T is the real victim here).

Mr. Auernheimer's legal defense team attempted to argue that he did not deserve hard time, and instead just six months probation for the offense, but that plea failed.

According to Gawker's Adrian Chen, prosecutors cited a Reddit AMA Mr. Auernheimer did last night as proof that he would reoffend following his release. In the AMA, Mr. Auernheimer stated that he would run for Congress once released, and because of "congressional immunity" this would allow him to "drop hacks on the floor of Congress and be completely immune for doing so."

For his part, Mr. Aeurnheimer seemed to show little remorse towards AT&T. "My regret is being nice enough to give AT&T a chance to patch before dropping the dataset to Gawker," he wrote. "I won't nearly be as nice next time."

https://twitter.com/AdrianChen/status/313649642057371649

Original image (left), fake tweet from #SandyLootCrew (right) (Photo: Sydney Morning Herald)

The media hasn't been as roughed up by Sandy as, say, the transportation industry. But with power failures and flooding, it can be hard to get a proper source on the line. And while Twitter may be a “truth machine,” fact-checking rumors in real-time, its constant flood of information is as unpredictable as the storm itself. That came into focus earlier this week when Shashank Tripathi was outed for spreading a false report about the New York Stock Exchange under the pseudonymous handle @comfortablysmug.

Well, add another troll to the list. Rather, an entire crew: the self-styled Gay N**ger Association of America (GNAA), an online activist group, behind the willfully misleading hashtag #sandylootcrew. False information and fake images of black looters tweeted under that hashtag were published by the Daily Mail, the Drudge Report and Infowars, which is exactly what the four core members of the GNAA wanted, Leon Kaiser, GNAA's "interim president and head of public relations" told Betabeat by email.

A fake tweet from the GNAA.

"To sum it up, myself and a few members of the GNAA thought that it would be amusing to pretend to be looters,” said Mr. Kaiser, who claims to be a 19-year-old African-American male living in New Mexico. "One of us came up with the hashtag #SANDYLOOTCREW. We were making the most ridiculous tweets that we could think .. .people will believe literally anything, even us stealing cats.”

(Leon Kaiser is not his real name, he said, "but a combination of my middle and mother's maiden name, respectively." GNAA, which is affiliated with the hacker collective Goatse Security, is cagey after two of Goatse's members--including Andrew Auernheimer, the grey hat hacker "weev"--were arrested in 2011 for revealing iPad users' emails in order to expose an AT&T security hole. Mr. Auernheimer is the former president of GNAA. Mr. Kaiser insists no user information was released in the AT&T case. "A list of emails was only compiled for the purposes of proving to the media that the vulnerability existed," he told Betabeat. "The list of emails was destroyed after that." For its efforts, Goatse received a Crunchie award in Public Service from TechCrunch.)

As the New York Daily News reported Wednesday afternoon, there has been some looting in Coney Island in the wake of the hurricane. Reached by phone, an employee at Rent-a-Center on Mermaid Avenue confirmed reports of theft. Thursday afternoon, NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne responded to questions from Betabeat about the timeline of thefts with the following statement:

Coney Island
There were nine suspects, five of them women, arrested in the 60th Precinct in Coney Island Tuesday afternoon; four for burglary, four for possession of stolen property, and a fifth for criminal possession of a firearm. The suspects were caught in the act of either attempting to gain entry or leaving a closed store or in possession of its merchandise on or near Mermaid Avenue. Some were in possession of property taken from a dollar store, another was arrested after breaking into a Citibank branch but leaving empty-handed. A 29-year-old woman was charged with CPW after the safe she was caring from a store was found to contain a firearm. Tuesday night, police presence was stepped up along Mermaid Avenue and vicinity, and additional light towers were erected. There was no looting overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. However, early this morning just after midnight, police arrested 18 individuals for burglary of Key Food in Coney Island.

Far Rockaway
In the 101st Pct in Far Rockaway four  arrests were made yesterday morning stemming from the entry of a closed  Radio Shack on Beach Channel Drive where four women, ranging in age from 16 to 49, to include possible employees of the store, were charged with burglary.

But none of the GNAA's photos represented crimes committed post-Sandy. In fact, the Sydney Morning Herald traced one of the images reprinted in the Daily Mail as far back as 2005.

The pictures of the woman with the mannequin and the man hugging the TV were posted on forums in 2005.

The boy with the shotgun was posted on a blog about Hurricane Frances in 2008 and the picture of the sign outside a house was found on a 2005 AP story about Hurricane Katrina.

Over email, Mr. Kaiser didn't seem very concerned about possible backlash against the group for fanning the flames of looting hysteria, or for using incredibly offensive racial stereotypes in the name of teaching the media a lesson.

“I'm not worried," he said. "I've gotten scores of death threats and whatnot for doing this, and I do this sort of thing a lot. They get old after a while. If anything were to fan the flames of looting, it'd be the irresponsible handling of this story by the media. Anyone who takes 'NIGGA I JUST STOLE A CAT OUTTA SUM1S HOUSE GET ON MY LEVEL' at face value probably shouldn't be working in the news industry.”

Wonder what Councilman Peter Vallone will have to say about this!