The Jester (also known by the

leetspeak Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via refle ...

handle th3j3st3r) is a self-identified

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 u ...

hacktivist Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of '' hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roo ...

. He claims to be responsible for attacks on

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

and Islamist websites. He claims to be acting out of American patriotism.

Identity

The Jester has stated that he was a former soldier and had served in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

and elsewhere. A former defense operative claimed that The Jester was a former military contractor involved in US Special Operations Command projects.

Activities

On January 1, 2010, The Jester began a campaign against

Jihadist Jihadism is a neologism for modern, armed militant Political aspects of Islam, Islamic movements that seek to Islamic state, establish states based on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief that armed confrontation ...

websites. His first target was alemarah.info, which was the

Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...

's website at the time. The Jester posted several tweets claiming to be responsible for the downtime WikiLeaks was experiencing. On November 29, 2010, someone claiming to be The Jester stated that he had been raided by the U.S. and attempted to solicit money for legal fees. The Jester purported that the person was an impostor, though writers at InfoSecIsland believe the hoax was created by The Jester himself. In February 2011, The Jester claimed credit for a DoS attack on several sites belonging to the

Westboro Baptist Church The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American unaffiliated Primitive Baptists, Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group and a cult, and is known for Prot ...

for celebrating the death of homosexual U.S. servicemen. In June 2011 The Jester vowed to find and expose members of

LulzSec LulzSec (a contraction for Lulz Security) is a Grey hat, grey hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the 2011 PlayStation Network outage, compromise of user accounts from PlayStation N ...

. He attempted to obtain and publish

personally identifiable information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely used in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has fou ...

of key members within the group, whom he described as "childish". In March 2011, Barrett Brown said The Jester was trying to identify members of

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

with Backtrace Security, a group of former members of Anonymous who disagreed with the current Anonymous. On June 24, 2011, he incorrectly claimed to have revealed the identity of LulzSec leader Sabu as an information technology consultant possibly from

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. In July of the same year, he falsely accused a Portuguese IT professional of also being Sabu, leaving The Jester's outing claims to be considered suspect. However, in a post on his blog in November 2011, The Jester retracted his prior identifications for "Sabu", issued an apology and correctly identified "Sabu" as Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, of New York. Sabu's identity was confirmed on March 6, 2012, when Monsegur was arrested by the FBI and it was revealed that he had been acting as an FBI informant in the interim. On March 5, 2012, The Jester changed his Twitter account avatar from his signature Jester icon to a QR code without comment or explanation. Scanning a QR code redirects a browser to a website. Scanning The Jester's icon led to a URL where he had an image of his signature Jester icon and an embedded, hidden code that allegedly exploited a vulnerability that affects

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

, Chrome and Android browsers. "When anyone scanned the original QR code using an

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

or Android device, their device would silently make a TCP shell connection back to my remote server," The Jester wrote. This was however exposed to be fake and the exploit was stolen from a 2-year-old CVE advisory. On May 14, 2012, The Jester's Twitter account appeared to have been deleted, along with all posts on his

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

blog. However, the Twitter account and WordPress blog were merely temporarily deactivated and were subsequently restored May 16, 2012. On July 2, 2013, The Jester took responsibility for a series of DoS cyberattacks against the

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

ean stock exchange and the country's tourism website, and promised to attack any other governments considering granting asylum to NSA leaker

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...

. In tweets, The Jester also alluded to a plan to seize control of the fire alarms at the Ecuadorean embassy in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, which would force WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of News leak, leaks from Chels ...

to set foot on UK soil and face potential extradition to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

to face sexual assault charges. On October 21, 2016, The Jester took responsibility for "defacing" the official website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The "hack" was later shown to be fake.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jester, The Hacktivists Internet activists Living people Unidentified American criminals Vigilantes Year of birth unknown Year of birth missing (living people)