This article is more than 1 year old

Wikileaks DDoSser 'Jester' in phantom cop raid tomfoolery

Spartacus tweet fake twat row

Updated The hacker suspected of involvement in the first denial of service attacks against Wikileaks has disowned blog posts that reported a raid on him by local police as the work of an imposter.

A patriot-hacker called The Jester, who previously used an XerXeS application layer attack tool he developed to assault jihadist sites, claimed to have done for Wikileaks in the run-up to its controversial publication of US diplomatic cables on Sunday. Jester claimed responsibility for the attack via an update to his @th3j35t3r account.

The use of a low bandwidth application layer attacks is consistent with data from DDoS mitigation firm Arbor Network, which reported a relatively modest attack of 2-4 Gbps. By contrast, a second assault launched on Tuesday reached 10 Gbps and bore the hallmarks of a botnet-powered packet flood, a more conventional attack strategy.

Around the same time, a blog post by @th3j3st3r (note the difference in spelling) reported on a supposed raid by local police and the confiscation of equipment. The blog itself appeared convincing enough in its appearance but the claims of a raid always looked dubious. The original Jester, who has been active since at least the start of the year, confirmed that @th3j3st3r is an imposter.

The whole "I am Sparticus" Jester, no I am, meme has quickly descended into Monty Python-like confusion.

Some of the relevant blog entries and Twitter updates have been deleted. However the sequence of events as they unfolded is clear from Twitter updates from F-Secure's Mikko H Hypponen (@mikkohypponen) here.

Veteran hacker, Oxblood Ruffin, of Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) neatly relayed* that whoever Jester (th3j35t3r) might be " ...anyone who spells their nick with numbers in an effort to look 'leet' deserves to have their computer confiscated", a sentiment it's hard to disagree with. ®

Update

Oxblood has been in touch to say he wasn't the originator of this quote.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like