The Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) was an

Internet trolling In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the int ...

group. They targeted several prominent websites and Internet personalities including ''

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evalu ...

'',

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right and alt-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas, which the Genesis Communications Network broadcas ...

, and prominent members of the

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can p ...

. They also released software products, and leaked screenshots and information about upcoming operating systems. In addition, they maintained a software repository and a wiki-based site dedicated to Internet commentary. Members of the GNAA also founded

Goatse Security Goatse Security (GoatSec) was a loose-knit, nine-person grey hat hacker group that specialized in uncovering security flaws. It was a division of the anti-blogging Internet trolling organization known as the Gay Nigger Association of America (GN ...

, a

grey hat A grey hat (greyhat or gray hat) is a computer hacker or computer security expert who may sometimes violate laws or typical ethical standards, but usually does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker. The term came into use ...

information security group. Members of Goatse Security released information in June 2010 about email addresses on

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

's website from people who had subscribed to mobile data service using the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

. After the vulnerability was disclosed, the then-president of the GNAA,

weev Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer ( ; born ), best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described him as being a neo-Nazi, w ...

, and a GNAA member, "JacksonBrown", were arrested.

Origins, known members and name

The group was run by a president.

New media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

researcher

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

However, professor

Jodi Dean Jodi Dean (born April 9, 1962) is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state. She held the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professorship of the Humanities and So ...

and Ross Cisneros claimed that they were an organized group of anti-blogging trolls. Reporters also referred to the GNAA as a group. In her 2017 book ''Troll Hunting'', Australian journalist Ginger Gorman identified the president of the GNAA as an individual from

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

known as "Meepsheep". Known former presidents of the GNAA were security researcher Jaime "asshurtmacfags" Cochran, who also co-founded the hacking group "Rustle League", and "timecop", founder of the anime fansub group "Dattebayo". Cochran is also the only known woman member of GNAA. Other members included former president Andrew "

" Auernheimer, Daniel "JacksonBrown" Spitler, and former spokesman Leon Kaiser. GNAA has also been documented as having been loosely affiliated with the satirical wiki

Encyclopedia Dramatica Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED; also spelled Encyclopædia Dramatica) is a satirical online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google ...

. The group's name incited controversy and was described as "causing immediate alarm in anyone with a semblance of good taste", "intentionally offensive", and "spectacularly offensive". The group denied allegations of racism and homophobia, explaining that the name was intended to sow disruption on the Internet and challenge

social norms Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or soci ...

(claiming it was derived from the 1992 Danish satirical

blaxploitation Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president o ...

film '' Gayniggers from Outer Space'').

Trolling

The GNAA used many different methods of trolling. One was to simply " crapflood" a weblog's comment form with text consisting of repeated words and phrases. On Wikipedia, members of the group created an article about the group, while adhering to Wikipedia's rules and policies; a process Andrew Lih says "essentially

sed sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed wa ...

the system against itself." Another method included attacking many

Internet Relay Chat Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called ''channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and ...

channels and networks using different IRC flooding techniques. The GNAA also produced

shock site A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive or disturbing to its viewers, though it can also contain elements of humor or evoke (in some viewers) sexual arousal. Shock-oriented websites generally contain material such as pornograp ...

s containing

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...

. One such site, "Last Measure", contained embedded malware that opened up "an endless cascade of pop-up windows displaying pornography or horrific medical pictures." They also performed

proof of concept Proof of concept (POC or PoC), also known as proof of principle, is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has prac ...

demonstrations. These actions occasionally interrupted the normal operation of popular websites.

2000s

In July 2004, two GNAA members submitted leaked screenshots of the upcoming operating system

Mac OS X v10.4 Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Som ...

to the popular

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

news website

MacRumors MacRumors.com is a website that aggregates Mac and Apple-related news and rumors. The site launched on February 24, 2000, in Richmond, Virginia, and is owned by Arnold Kim. By consolidating reports and cross-referencing claims, MacRumors aims to ...

, resulting in a post which read "With

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in th ...

just days away, the first Tiger information and screenshots appears to have been leaked. According to sources, Apple will reportedly provide developers with a Mac OS X 10.4 preview copy at WWDC on Monday. The screenshots provided reportedly come from this upcoming developer preview." In June 2005, the GNAA announced that it had created a Mac OS X Tiger release for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

processors which caught media attention from various sources. The next day, the supposed leak was mentioned on the G4 television show ''

Attack of the Show ''Attack of the Show!'' (''AOTS'') is an American live television program and that aired on G4 (American TV network), G4. AOTS features segments on pop culture, video games, and movies. After an initial run from 2005 to 2013 (which originally a ...

''. The

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

released via BitTorrent merely booted a shock image instead of the leaked operating system. On February 3, 2007, the GNAA successfully managed to convince CNN reporter

Paula Zahn Paula Ann Zahn (; born February 24, 1956) is an American journalist and newscaster who has been an anchor at ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, and CNN. She currently produces and hosts the true crime documentary series ''On the Case with Paula Zahn'' ...

that "one in three Americans" believe that the September 11, 2001, terror attacks were carried out by Israeli agents. CNN subsequently ran a story erroneously reporting this, involving a round-table discussion regarding antisemitism and an interview with the father of a Jewish 9/11 victim. The GNAA-owned website said that "over 4,000" Jews were absent from work at the World Trade Center on 9/11. On February 11, 2007, an attack was launched on the website of US presidential candidate (and future US president)

, where the group's name was caused to appear on the website's front page.

2010s

In late January 2010, the GNAA used a then-obscure phenomenon known as cross-protocol scripting (a combination of

cross-site scripting Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of security vulnerability that can be found in some web applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may ...

and inter-protocol exploitation) to cause users of the

Freenode Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname , which load balances connections by usi ...

IRC network to unknowingly flood IRC channels after visiting websites containing inter-protocol exploits. They also have used a combination of inter-protocol, cross-site, and

integer overflow In computer programming, an integer overflow occurs when an arithmetic operation attempts to create a numeric value that is outside of the range that can be represented with a given number of digits – either higher than the maximum or lower t ...

bugs in both the

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

and

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

web browsers to flood IRC channels. On October 30, the GNAA began a trolling campaign in the aftermath of

Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as ''Superstorm Sandy'') was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane, as well as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spann ...

on the US East Coast, spreading fake photographs and tweets of alleged looters in action. After the GNAA published a press-release detailing the incident, mainstream media outlets began detailing how the prank was carried out. On December 3, the GNAA was identified as being responsible for a

attack on

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

that resulted in thousands of Tumblr blogs being defaced with a pro-GNAA message. In January 2013, the GNAA collaborated with users on the imageboard

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...

to start a "#cut4bieber" trend on Twitter, encouraging fans of Canadian pop singer

Justin Bieber Justin Drew Bieber ( ; born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian singer. Bieber is recognized for his genre-melding musicianship and has played an influential role in modern-day popular music. He was discovered by American record executive Scooter ...

to practice

self-harm Self-harm is intentional behavior that is considered harmful to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissues usually without a suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-injury and self-mutilatio ...

. From 2014 into 2015, GNAA members began playing an active role in the

Gamergate controversy Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" pri ...

, sabotaging efforts made by pro-Gamergate parties. Several GNAA members were able to gain administrative access to

8chan 8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan (stylized as ∞chan), is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site ha ...

's (an imageboard associated with Gamergate) primary Gamergate board, which they disrupted and ultimately closed. The GNAA also claimed responsibility for releasing private information related to many pro-Gamergate activists. On October 13, 2016, GNAA member Meepsheep vandalized Wikipedia to cause the entries for

Bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...

and

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

to be overlapped with pornographic images and a message endorsing Republican presidential candidate

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

. In August 2017, GNAA was named as having been involved in a feud between employees of the popular dating app

Bumble Bumble is an online dating application. Profiles of potential matches are displayed to users, who can "swipe left" to reject a candidate or "swipe right" to indicate interest. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contac ...

, and tenants of the apartment building in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

where the company was, at the time, illegally headquartered. Joseph Bernstein of

BuzzFeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, it ...

reported that one of the building's residents contacted GNAA to "fight back" against Bumble after multiple complaints regarding the company's activities were ignored. The dispute resulted in Bumble choosing to relocate from the building, which GNAA claimed credit for in a press release the group spammed across several major websites via

clickjacking Clickjacking (classified as a user interface redress attack or UI redressing) is a malicious technique of tricking a user into clicking on something different from what the user perceives, thus potentially revealing confidential information or ...

Goatse Security

Several members of the GNAA with expertise in

computer security research began releasing information about several software vulnerabilities under the name "Goatse Security." The group chose to publish their work under a separate name because they thought that they would not be taken seriously. In June 2010, Goatse Security attracted mainstream media attention for their discovery of at least 114,000 unsecured

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...

es registered to Apple iPad devices for early adopters of Apple's 3G iPad service. The data was aggregated from AT&T's own servers by feeding a publicly available script with

HTTP request The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

s containing randomly generated ICC-IDs, which would then return the associated email address. The

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

soon investigated the incident. This investigation led to the arrest of then-GNAA President, Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer, on unrelated drug charges resulting from an FBI search of his home. In January 2011, the Department of Justice announced that Auernheimer would be charged with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud. A co-defendant, Daniel Spitler, was released on bail. In June 2011, Spitler pleaded guilty on both counts after reaching a plea agreement with US attorneys. On November 20, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. These convictions were overturned on April 11, 2014, and Auernheimer was subsequently released from prison.

In popular culture

Music

* Childish Gambino's 2013 song, ''III. Life: The Biggest Troll ndrew Auernheimer', is about GNAA member

. * YTCracker repeatedly references the GNAA and its members in his 2017 track, ''welcome to the get along gang''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gay Nigger Association of America 2002 establishments in the United States Cyberattack gangs Hacker groups Internet culture GNAA Online obscenity controversies Slashdot Underground computer groups