The Jester

About

The Jester is a computer hacker who has claimed responsibility for multiple high profile attacks on various websites, including those owned by WikiLeaks, Jihadists and Lulzsec. He often tweets the phrase "Tango down!" when announcing that he has successfully taken down a website with a denial of service (DoS) attack.

Online History

On December 19th, 2009, The Jester created the @th3j35t3r Twitter^[1] feed, which gained over 43,000 followers in the next three years. On January 1st, 2010, The Jester announced his attack on the Taliban website alemarah.info and several other Jihadist websites. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt,^[5] The Jester revealed that he started the campaign after creating a DoS script named "XerXes" (shown below) and had targeted Jihadist sites because he believed "they post the single biggest threat to the actual physical world at large."

On June 26th, Jester launched the blog Jester's Court,^[2] with his first post^[3] describing the site as "insights into the world of an independent citizen fighting the Jihadists online." On November 28th, 2010, The Jester announced via Twitter that he had managed to take down the online news leak publication website WikiLeaks, arguing that the organization was endangering the lives of United States troops.

On February 21st, 2011, The Jester began attacking sites maintained by the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) and continued to do so for over four weeks.^[6] On March 21st, The Jester posted a document on Pastebin^[7] listing several WBC websites that had been taken down during the DoS attacks.

Campaign Against LulzSec

On June 24th, 2011, The Guardian reported that The Jester was responsible for taking down the website of the hacker group LulzSec and that he had created a Pastebin in an attempt to out the group's founder Sabu. The same day, The Jester tweeted that he "did not engage" the LulzSecurity website, claiming it might have been the hacker Oneiroi.

The Guardian subsequently updated the article with The Jester's denial and the Pastebin page was appended with a message claiming that The Jester had not created it.

"Hate to break some hearts but the Jester did not create this pastebin as so many claim."

On June 25th, The Jester published a post^[10] about LulzSec leader Sabu, noting his connection to the domain prvt.org. The post included a Whois report connecting the domain to the email Xavier@OpenPlans.org. On March 8th, 2012, the blog Tech News Daily^[8] published an article reporting that The Jester had been instrumental in outing Sabu as New York resident Xavier Monsegur.

QR Code Hack

On March 5th, 2012, The Jester changed his Twitter avatar to an image of a QR Code. Upon scanning the code with an Android or iPhone device, it would direct the phone's browser to a website containing code giving The Jester access to information on the device. On March 9th, The Jester published a blog post^[9] revealing why he had posted the QR code, claiming that he used it to target Islamic extremists, Al Qaeda supporters and members of Anonymous, Lulzsec and Antisec.

Identity

The identity of The Jester is unknown. In April of 2012, The Jester held an Internet chat session with a group of students from the University of Maine and claimed to have served four tours of duty while active as a solider in the United States military.^[4]

Search Interest

External References