WEBVTT 00:00:00.033 --> 00:00:09.900 JACK: The news today is crazy. There’s injustice happening all around us but 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:16.500 it’s not clear what we should do about it. Or as Bob Dylan said, yes, and how many times can 00:00:16.500 --> 00:00:24.480 a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see? This is a story about how one guy decided 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:31.440 enough is enough and took matters into his own hands, and the only way a hacker knows how. 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:36.000 JACK (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:43.260 These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I’m 00:00:43.260 --> 00:00:56.051 Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:00:56.051 --> 00:01:02.640 JACK: [MUSIC] 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:06.060 This episode does have foul language and some 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:11.360 light descriptions of nudity. If that’s an issue for you, you’ve been warned. 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:13.320 W0RMER: I’m sorry, what’s that? 00:01:13.320 --> 00:01:16.560 JACK: I can use this call to – for the podcast Darknet Diaries? 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:17.940 W0RMER: Oh of course, of course. 00:01:17.940 --> 00:01:23.160 JACK: So, yeah, I want to hear all about it. I want to hear what happened to you, how you got 00:01:23.160 --> 00:01:26.340 in trouble, and all this stuff. Are you ready to start from the beginning? 00:01:26.340 --> 00:01:27.780 W0RMER: Yeah, yeah. 00:01:27.780 --> 00:01:32.520 JACK: Hackers sometimes have two names; the name they use online, like a cloak, 00:01:32.520 --> 00:01:36.840 the one they go by that all their friends online know them as even if they don’t know them at 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:42.000 all. Then there’s their real name, the name their family uses. Sometimes there’s a night 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:46.140 and day difference between the personas associated with these names, literally; 00:01:46.140 --> 00:01:51.480 one used only during the day and the other at night, in the darkness of the internet. 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:57.360 W0RMER: Yeah, from pretty early on, hacking for a cause versus hacking for a malicious – just 00:01:57.360 --> 00:02:03.240 to do it. I mean, just to do it was a lot of my early hacking days. I needed access or I’m bored; 00:02:03.240 --> 00:02:07.740 let me go hack this site up or hey, new zero-day, let me go try it out. 00:02:07.740 --> 00:02:10.680 But that focused me into that realm. 00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:14.640 JACK: His love of computers led him into hacking, all kinds of hacking; 00:02:14.640 --> 00:02:19.260 knocking websites offline, getting into their databases and defacing them were 00:02:19.260 --> 00:02:25.560 all things that he knew how to do and was doing, sometimes just for fun, sometimes for a cause. 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:33.120 W0RMER: But yeah, so that kind of lent itself from the adoption of Anonymous by me. 00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:38.160 They seem to have the same ideals, they like to do funny shit just for funniness and I was all 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:46.920 about that, but I also liked the fact that there was a little bit of social justice in there. 00:02:46.920 --> 00:02:52.320 Hey, we’re gonna go harass these people but it’s for this cause. At the time, 00:02:52.320 --> 00:02:56.280 apolitical; there’s no right, there’s no left, there’s no wrong or right. It was just this was 00:02:56.280 --> 00:03:02.280 something to do. There was a lot of fervor behind this mask and this identity of non-identities. 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:08.340 JACK: This is w0rmer. At least, that’s his online name, his Anonymous identity. When I 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:13.080 say w0rmer is his Anonymous identity, I mean that is the name he would use 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:17.580 while hanging out with Anonymous online in chat rooms and around the internet. 00:03:17.580 --> 00:03:22.680 W0RMER: I had the technological know-how to see the hacks. I had been on the AnonOps 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:27.480 channels and stuff as they were doing these giant DDosses and I watched and learned 00:03:27.480 --> 00:03:34.560 the organization as it was being managed; the secret rooms and all that good stuff. 00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:35.640 ANON: We are Anonymous. 00:03:35.640 --> 00:03:39.420 JACK: Nobody is really a member of Anonymous. 00:03:39.420 --> 00:03:42.060 ANON: We are legion. We do not forgive. 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:45.180 JACK: At the same time, everyone is really a member of Anonymous. 00:03:45.180 --> 00:03:47.880 ANON: We do not forget. Expect us. 00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:51.900 JACK: It’s not a well-defined group but w0rmer here had been watching what they 00:03:51.900 --> 00:03:56.040 were doing for years and sympathizing with a lot of [00:05:00] their causes. For instance… 00:03:56.040 --> 00:04:00.000 SPKR1: Shut it down. It is time to shut down this terrorist organization, 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:03.660 this terrorist website Wikileaks. Shut it down, Attorney General Holder. 00:04:03.660 --> 00:04:07.920 JACK: In 2010, Wikileaks, a site that was releasing secret documents to the public, 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:12.300 rose in popularity. Wikileaks was based on the idea of letting 00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:15.960 the people judge these secrets and government activities, or scandals, 00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:21.300 for themselves. But many of those in power saw Wikileaks as a big problem. 00:04:21.300 --> 00:04:25.320 SPKR2: I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done… 00:04:25.320 --> 00:04:25.800 SPKR3: Assange. 00:04:25.800 --> 00:04:30.720 SPKR2: Yeah. He needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:33.660 if that becomes a problem, you need to change the law. 00:04:33.660 --> 00:04:39.480 JACK: Many people and Anonymous loved the idea of people in power falling due to a 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:45.780 scandal coming to light. But let me remind you this was ten years ago; a lot about Assange and 00:04:45.780 --> 00:04:51.761 Wikileaks has changed since then but at that time, Anonymous liked Wikileaks and thought it was cool. 00:04:51.761 --> 00:04:54.540 REPORTER1: [MUSIC] The founder of Wikileaks has warned that it 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:58.050 may soon have to stop publishing secrets because of a cash crisis. 00:04:58.050 --> 00:05:04.860 JACK: But in January 2010, PayPal suspended and froze all donations to Wikileaks. 00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:08.340 REPORTER1: Julian Assange says the outfit is feeling the pinch because 00:05:08.340 --> 00:05:11.280 of a financial blockade by several US firms. 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:16.080 JACK: This made a lot of people in Anonymous outraged so a group of 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:19.080 Anonymous people decided to take PayPal offline. 00:05:19.080 --> 00:05:23.040 REPORTER2: Anonymous hacktivists, hacker activists, have basically gotten together 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:27.900 and are exacting revenge for what they see is attacks on Wikileaks and they’re 00:05:27.900 --> 00:05:33.480 targeting a number of corporations that have cut off their ties with Wikileaks; Mastercard, 00:05:33.480 --> 00:05:39.300 VISA, PayPal, also the Swiss bank that shut down Julian Assange’s account in Switzerland. 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:42.240 JACK: So, were you watching some of that stuff go down? 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:47.700 W0RMER: I was in the chatrooms when that was going on, yeah, from the planning phases to the 00:05:47.700 --> 00:05:55.440 kicking it off and getting everyone on board. In fact, I believe around a similar time, 00:05:55.440 --> 00:06:00.660 I wrote a Python application that would actually look at Twitter trends 00:06:00.660 --> 00:06:08.580 and then inject our call-to-action to try to force the hand of okay, well, here’s this trending 00:06:08.580 --> 00:06:12.840 thing, here’s this thing we want to talk about; quickly inject it into the stream a couple times 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:19.800 and move onto the next one. I was definitely part of the machine, getting people involved 00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:23.700 and understanding the attacks and why people were doing it and how they were organizing it. 00:06:23.700 --> 00:06:28.560 JACK: Fourteen people were arresting for this attack on PayPal. W0rmer didn’t 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:33.480 get caught this time. [MUSIC] But, he wormed his way deeper into Anonymous. 00:06:33.480 --> 00:06:38.820 It had become part of his identity. He saw the next big movement starting up. 00:06:38.820 --> 00:06:46.080 W0RMER: Around 2010, 2011, the Occupy movement had started. 00:06:46.080 --> 00:06:50.820 JACK: He was upset that banks, the one-percenters, were getting bailed 00:06:50.820 --> 00:06:58.140 out. The 99% rest of us had to carry the burden. He wanted to get the message out. 00:06:58.140 --> 00:07:06.660 W0RMER: I did Anon communications, so if we needed something or if we had an event that 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:12.660 we were doing or a call-to-action, I would go and amplify that through your Anon news and 00:07:12.660 --> 00:07:17.940 etc, etc. I would throw that up and to get it into the masses. I did the hacker channels, 00:07:17.940 --> 00:07:20.880 right? They were dedicated channels where if you were a hacker, they would bring you 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:24.840 into that. I hadn’t yet really broken the law but I was still helping out. 00:07:24.840 --> 00:07:30.540 JACK: Anonymous was known for exposing issues that they thought the public should know about. This 00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:38.220 morphed into a sort of online township rebellion. Why stand on a silent platform? Fight the war. 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:44.760 W0RMER: By this time, I’m already very Rage Against the Machine. Fuck the government, 00:07:44.760 --> 00:07:49.500 fuck this. I’m going all-in and here’s a cause where the rest of 00:07:49.500 --> 00:07:53.300 the people around me are also for it, you know? 00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:58.320 JACK: It became a movement to just get – let’s get the truth out there and expose 00:07:58.320 --> 00:08:01.440 some things. I could see why you were swept up in the fervor now. 00:08:01.440 --> 00:08:08.400 W0RMER: Right, and remember the hacker manifesto; it is that all information should be free, so it 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:13.140 was ingrained in me by this point. Everything should be free. Look at these whistleblowers, 00:08:13.140 --> 00:08:20.400 look at this. Yeah, it was really easy for me to get swept up in a radicalized 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:24.000 – I already had the prerequisites. I just needed 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:28.080 someone to point my anger somewhere and Anonymous, at that time, did just that. 00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:32.160 JACK: One of the prerequisites he had was that he was becoming a skillful hacker; 00:08:32.160 --> 00:08:36.480 not just taking websites offline by flooding them with packets, but he was also learning how to 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:42.660 wiggle his way into a website with precision and gain access to the back-end database. With these 00:08:42.660 --> 00:08:48.480 skills and Anonymous lighting the fire behind him, it was soon gonna be time for w0rmer to 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:55.380 jump into action. [MUSIC] [PROTESTING] In 2011, the Occupy movement protests [00:10:00] began… 00:08:55.380 --> 00:08:56.892 PRTSTRS: Occupy Wall Street! Wall Street! Wall Street! 00:08:56.892 --> 00:09:01.230 JACK: …calling witness to wealth inequality in the US. 00:09:01.230 --> 00:09:03.687 PRTSTR1: It’s immoral not to stand up and say something. 00:09:03.687 --> 00:09:09.420 JACK: [CHANTING] There was an injustice here and w0rmer wasn’t going to sit and do nothing. 00:09:09.420 --> 00:09:14.100 This movement moved him to get up and go protest himself, in person, 00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:20.220 in a small town in Michigan where he was living at the time. He was protesting downtown and 00:09:20.220 --> 00:09:25.500 then camping there all night. Twenty-four hours a day, he was making a statement. 00:09:25.500 --> 00:09:29.820 PRTSTR2: The police use batons to clear them out, that the police threw their stuff into 00:09:29.820 --> 00:09:34.140 garbage trucks, into rubbish trucks, and told them they could come and get it back in the morning. 00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:37.320 JACK: But cities were not always happy with this. 00:09:37.320 --> 00:09:41.110 Some had called in the police to clear out these camps. [SHOUTING, COMMOTION] 00:09:41.110 --> 00:09:46.500 POLICE: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we ask that you walk out to the sidewalks. 00:09:46.500 --> 00:09:50.460 JACK: But when the cops started doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing, 00:09:50.460 --> 00:09:56.760 that’s when Anonymous started keeping a close tab on them and recording what they were doing. 00:09:56.760 --> 00:10:00.060 POLICE: …after it’s clean, as was stated in the legal notice. 00:10:00.060 --> 00:10:06.060 W0RMER: Well, at that time, I was doing cop watch. There were still some camps that were running but 00:10:06.060 --> 00:10:10.740 they were all pretty much getting their eviction notices. So, I’m watching this one particular 00:10:10.740 --> 00:10:16.680 one. I don’t remember the state but I remember the event; these cops were marching in on this place. 00:10:16.680 --> 00:10:21.480 They had already harassed the camp multiple times, flashing their lights to try to wake everybody up, 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:28.500 that kind of stuff. As they’re coming through, the camera people on the ground were trying to 00:10:28.500 --> 00:10:33.060 record and get their IDs, right? Trying to get their numbers. We noticed that their numbers 00:10:33.060 --> 00:10:39.120 were blacked out. They had put black tape over them. I was just like, whoa, what’s going on? 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:42.300 We had reports of people switching districts, so they would raid a camp 00:10:42.300 --> 00:10:45.480 not in their police district in case they had friends or family that ran into it, 00:10:45.480 --> 00:10:54.240 doing all these kinds of little things. So, I’m watching this elderly woman [COMMOTION] 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:59.700 and she starts having a seizure. This cop, assuming automatically that she’s resisting, 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:07.980 continues to start beating her. [MUSIC] The oh-my-god-that-could-be-me hit me like a ton of 00:11:07.980 --> 00:11:14.400 bricks and action had to happen. It had to happen. They’re arresting everybody, they’re shutting down 00:11:14.400 --> 00:11:22.220 our camp, everything’s just starting to come to that head. I said that’s it. I can do something. 00:11:22.220 --> 00:11:31.020 JACK: W0rmer begins to morph from an activist into a hacktivist and enters some dark waters on the 00:11:31.020 --> 00:11:37.740 internet. He finds out Anonymous had already started something called Operation Pig Roast. 00:11:37.740 --> 00:11:45.680 After the break, w0rmer goes head over heels into it all. 00:11:45.680 --> 00:11:46.680 W0RMER: 00:11:46.680 --> 00:11:52.080 They were going around for the Occupy movement and finding this private information about 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:56.880 these police officers because they had started hiding their badges and stuff. 00:11:56.880 --> 00:12:01.680 JACK: W0rmer, the hacktivist, has moved his camp from downtown on the streets to 00:12:01.680 --> 00:12:06.780 back home in his bedroom where he can try to use hacking to expose the police that 00:12:06.780 --> 00:12:11.580 were covering up their names and badge numbers and sort of pull that tape off, 00:12:11.580 --> 00:12:16.320 digitally. Anonymous didn’t want these cops being anonymous. 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:19.080 W0RMER: We’re after cops. I’m gonna find ‘em all. 00:12:19.080 --> 00:12:25.380 JACK: [MUSIC] He would first scour Google looking for any lists of police officers 00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:30.060 in his town and then try to match them with faces and try to identify them in 00:12:30.060 --> 00:12:36.900 the protest videos. This was something but it wasn’t enough. W0rmer wanted to know more. 00:12:36.900 --> 00:12:45.300 W0RMER: I was after names and addresses. If you didn’t want to follow your own laws to use your 00:12:45.300 --> 00:12:48.060 number on your badge so at least you could [00:15:00] be accountable for your crimes, 00:12:48.060 --> 00:12:55.020 then I’m gonna make it really easy to go back and check to make sure hey, this guy did this thing. 00:12:55.020 --> 00:13:00.120 JACK: W0rmer decides to hack the police. He started getting a list of police department 00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:04.980 websites and looking at them to see if there was any way to hack into them to see maybe he could 00:13:04.980 --> 00:13:10.500 find a list of police officers. Back then, you were kind of doing something new which 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:14.940 was going after cops. Not many people had done that yet. Did it kind of feel 00:13:14.940 --> 00:13:20.580 like this was a forbidden target? Did it feel really, really, really wrong to you, or what? 00:13:20.580 --> 00:13:25.560 W0RMER: I have cops in my family. I don’t hate cops. I hated what these particular 00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:29.640 cops were doing. I came into this knowing that at some point I was gonna be caught, 00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:37.380 at some point I was gonna be held responsible, and we just had to do it. 00:13:37.380 --> 00:13:41.580 ANON: Sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the ride. 00:13:41.580 --> 00:13:46.140 JACK: [MUSIC] The Anonymous Operation Pig Roast went into full effect. 00:13:46.140 --> 00:13:51.300 ANON: We couldn’t sit idle while we watched our brothers and sisters being beaten. 00:13:51.300 --> 00:13:54.480 JACK: W0rmer joined up with a hacking crew called 00:13:54.480 --> 00:13:59.340 CabinCr3w and he began a roaring rampage of hacking the police. 00:13:59.340 --> 00:14:02.160 ANON: We’re the Cabin. We’re the 99%. 00:14:02.160 --> 00:14:07.320 JACK: He would ask other people in Anonymous to send him links to every police department’s 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:11.760 website in the US. He would build a long list of these websites and then he would use his 00:14:11.760 --> 00:14:17.880 computer to programmatically scan each website to see if any of them were vulnerable. The first one 00:14:17.880 --> 00:14:23.040 that he found that was vulnerable was the police department’s website in West Virginia. He found 00:14:23.040 --> 00:14:29.160 the website was vulnerable to SQL injections, a common vulnerability on many websites. So, 00:14:29.160 --> 00:14:33.180 he hacked into the West Virginia Police Department’s website using an SQL injection 00:14:33.180 --> 00:14:40.380 and this allowed him to peek behind the website and see the database underneath. That database 00:14:40.380 --> 00:14:46.560 had a list of all the police officers in that department. You got the database which had 150 00:14:46.560 --> 00:14:51.720 law enforcement officer usernames, passwords, home address, home phone number, cell phone number. 00:14:51.720 --> 00:14:53.880 W0RMER: Yeah, yeah. 00:14:53.880 --> 00:14:57.540 JACK: I mean, what are you doing with this data then, 00:14:57.540 --> 00:15:02.160 once you have a database dump of a police department? 00:15:02.160 --> 00:15:05.700 W0RMER: Pastebin or Ghostbin or one of the bins and then send 00:15:05.700 --> 00:15:14.880 it out. It wasn’t for me to be judge and executioner. My job was the way I saw it. 00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:21.600 Anonymous as a whole wanted and needed for whatever reason, this information. 00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:28.440 I don’t need to agree or know or any of that; here’s my job, I’m gonna go do it. 00:15:28.440 --> 00:15:34.260 JACK: So, w0rmer would publish the personal information on all these police officers that 00:15:34.260 --> 00:15:39.600 he could find, posting it to places like Pastebin which is a place you can write text anonymously 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:43.740 and it pretty much stays there forever. But of course, as soon as it was posted there, 00:15:43.740 --> 00:15:49.680 it was also tweeted out and spread on all the Anonymous channels so the world could see the 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:55.680 personal information of these police officers. This is what you call doxxing the police. 00:15:55.680 --> 00:15:58.860 ANON: Remember, don’t dox and drive. 00:15:58.860 --> 00:16:03.840 JACK: Yeah, I mean, I’m trying to guess at what you’re hoping happens here might 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:07.800 be that somebody catches one of these police officers on a video, 00:16:07.800 --> 00:16:12.960 they see their badge number or something, and now they can look up on Pastebin this is the 00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:17.400 guy – this is the actual police officer, this is where he lives, and all this kind of stuff. 00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:21.060 Is that what you were kind of hoping, is that somebody else makes the connections after you? 00:16:21.060 --> 00:16:28.920 W0RMER: Well, right, right, and the real-life effect was cops stopped getting on and doing 00:16:28.920 --> 00:16:32.400 these big press conferences where they talked about how they destroyed Occupy movements, 00:16:32.400 --> 00:16:39.420 right? Because every time a police officer had been in front of that camera, we had Doxxed 00:16:39.420 --> 00:16:45.420 them. That just got bigger and bigger. There was the real-life ramifications of that; 00:16:45.420 --> 00:16:51.960 what we were trying to do was accomplished. We had them hey, if you’re gonna do this, cool, 00:16:51.960 --> 00:16:57.000 that’s your job. You’re gonna be a cop, that’s your beat. Cool; this is my job. This my beat. 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.500 JACK: As w0rmer would hack the police, put everything into Pastebin and then publish it, 00:17:01.500 --> 00:17:09.900 he was also tweeting this. Here’s one; on February 7th, 2012, username Anonw0rmer posted on Twitter 00:17:09.900 --> 00:17:16.020 #op, #pigroast, and #CabinCr3w, and then with Pastebin links to the website where he dumped the 00:17:16.020 --> 00:17:22.140 whole database of police officer names. At this point, the West Virginia gazette noticed the dump 00:17:22.140 --> 00:17:30.780 and wrote an article about this. W0rmer tweeted, quote, “Was that us? ROFL. Yeah? Oops.” End quote. 00:17:30.780 --> 00:17:36.180 The next police department website he found vulnerable was Alabama Department of Public Safety 00:17:36.180 --> 00:17:41.220 which included the National Crime Information Center data. Like, this website had access to 00:17:41.220 --> 00:17:45.840 databases such as the sex offender registry, vehicle registration information, and other 00:17:45.840 --> 00:17:49.680 personal identifying [00:20:00] information. But all w0rmer was interested in though, 00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:54.300 was the police officer’s personal information. So, he grabbed that and he started to put it together 00:17:54.300 --> 00:18:02.340 in another Pastebin dump but this one was a little different. This one is a little bit interesting. 00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:11.400 This Pastebin, you started a new thing. Why don’t you tell me what that Pastebin was about? 00:18:11.400 --> 00:18:16.320 W0RMER: You wanted the effect; you wanted to anger people. We weren’t just hacking. We were 00:18:16.320 --> 00:18:20.940 hacktivists and so you kind of had a little pizazz in it, right? [MUSIC] We were having 00:18:20.940 --> 00:18:26.760 people send us shots of them in various things of undress holding up these come-at-me-bros. 00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:34.020 JACK: Yeah, he actually did have the audacity to tweet at the FBI where he said quote, “Come at me, 00:18:34.020 --> 00:18:41.340 bro.” End quote. So, as w0rmer would put together his Pastebin post, he was adding extra pizazz; 00:18:41.340 --> 00:18:46.860 first, at the top of the post, he would spend a lot of time making some ASCII art. Since Pastebin 00:18:46.860 --> 00:18:51.840 only lets you post words and no pictures, he used just letters to make pictures and put 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:58.860 them in the post. Okay cool, but this is where things get weird. In this post he added a link 00:18:58.860 --> 00:19:07.740 to an image of a mostly naked woman but you can’t see her face and she’s holding a sign. So yeah, 00:19:07.740 --> 00:19:12.660 I mean, tell me about that picture. What does that picture – describe that picture to me. 00:19:12.660 --> 00:19:14.940 W0RMER: Well, I’m trying to remember which one was the first one. 00:19:14.940 --> 00:19:19.980 JACK: Well, it has her breast in sort of a bikini and then 00:19:19.980 --> 00:19:25.428 it said “PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w <3 u BiTch’s.” 00:19:25.428 --> 00:19:28.740 W0RMER: She had taken a bunch of photos holding these different signs I had told her about, 00:19:28.740 --> 00:19:35.460 or asked her to print up. So, that included into one of my hacks. 00:19:35.460 --> 00:19:39.720 JACK: Who was she again to you at the time? 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:44.940 W0RMER: I’m working on this decentralized platform dick-deep in C code, and in 00:19:44.940 --> 00:19:50.520 comes this Australian woman. She had seen something where the dogs were being abused 00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:54.060 and she wanted answers. She wanted this shit taken care of. 00:19:54.060 --> 00:20:00.060 JACK: So, she joins this Anonymous chatroom that w0rmer was in and started asking a bunch 00:20:00.060 --> 00:20:04.080 of questions like can you find out who’s doing this animal abuse kind of stuff? 00:20:04.080 --> 00:20:08.400 W0RMER: But the line that won her over was tits or get the fuck out. 00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:13.380 Didn’t have time for your BS, don’t have time for whatever you’re coming at me with. I’m building 00:20:13.380 --> 00:20:20.220 something great. I did that and she put a picture down with her head cut off of her 00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:26.700 in a bikini looking beautiful on the beach, and that was it. [MUSIC] I fell for her that day. 00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:30.000 JACK: So, she was just kind of on the fringes of 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:33.840 Anonymous, just kind of looking for information but not really involved. 00:20:33.840 --> 00:20:37.500 W0RMER: Right, right, and didn’t really want to be involved in any of it. She just, hey, 00:20:37.500 --> 00:20:39.240 here’s a cause I think you guys should hear about. 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:44.280 JACK: W0rmer starts flirting with this Australian woman. He starts liking 00:20:44.280 --> 00:20:48.480 her more and more and he finds himself chatting with her for hours and hours. 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:54.600 W0RMER: We had talked to each other online in Skype calls and stuff like that. I’d obviously 00:20:54.600 --> 00:21:00.420 seen her in various forms of undress. It was just, we hadn’t – I was in America, 00:21:00.420 --> 00:21:08.520 she was in Australia. Essentially, we’d private message and we’d just talk, like human to human. 00:21:08.520 --> 00:21:13.080 What are you looking for? Or what kind of dreams are you about? What’s your life like? We just 00:21:13.080 --> 00:21:20.880 started talking and I just fell for her. She was a genuine person. She talks and emotes literally 00:21:20.880 --> 00:21:26.760 with the feelings of herself. There’s no hiding behind things. I didn’t have to guess what she 00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:35.400 was doing or feeling or thinking. She’s pretty forward with it. We got engaged shortly after. 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:38.206 JACK: Have you met each other before you got engaged? 00:21:38.206 --> 00:21:44.940 W0RMER: Nope, no, no. You can, if you go through my Anonw0rmer tweets, too, 00:21:44.940 --> 00:21:54.900 you can even see how that kind of goes on fruition but essentially once we started talking and 00:21:54.900 --> 00:22:01.020 again, I’m hacking by day and at night ‘cause she’s sleeping or working, right? 00:22:01.020 --> 00:22:07.500 She’s in Australia so it’s a whole twelve-hour difference. I’m hacking and doing my stuff in 00:22:07.500 --> 00:22:14.220 the day and then I’m spending nights talking to her. I’m tired and all that other stuff. 00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:22.740 I’m a thirty-something year old dude. Like hey, here’s a hot chick and she seems to be cool. 00:22:22.740 --> 00:22:26.940 Everything that we’re doing in our – both in our social lives and as we’re talking, 00:22:26.940 --> 00:22:35.820 seem to be genuine. I feel one way, she feels the same way. I saw no reason – I couldn’t think 00:22:35.820 --> 00:22:43.980 of a reason. We had covered broad topics; everything from how do you see the future, 00:22:43.980 --> 00:22:48.360 what kind of plans, all that kind of stuff. By this time, [00:25:00] I think anyone who’s ever 00:22:48.360 --> 00:22:52.920 had an online relationship knows how quickly these things can just snowball up, right? 00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:57.840 JACK: Now, when w0rmer got these photos of this woman, he’s a hacker, right? One of the first 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:02.700 things he does is look to see what metadata there is in her photos. He sees the photo 00:23:02.700 --> 00:23:08.940 was taken in Thailand and asks her about it. She says yeah, she took it while on vacation. 00:23:08.940 --> 00:23:14.520 So, he asks her for more photos and these all have that Exif metadata in them and he was able 00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:20.580 to look to see where these photos were taken. He tracked it down to a house in South Victoria, 00:23:20.580 --> 00:23:25.740 Australia. He finds the exact address through the geolocation data in the 00:23:25.740 --> 00:23:33.120 photo and asks her what’s this address? She’s like yeah, that’s where I live. 00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:37.800 Now, over the next few days, they become better and better friends and he asks her to print out 00:23:37.800 --> 00:23:42.780 some paper signs and pose with these signs because he thinks this would be a great calling card to 00:23:42.780 --> 00:23:47.520 post with each police department database he leaks; a woman in a bikini with a sign 00:23:47.520 --> 00:23:52.740 that says ‘Hacked by w0rmer’ or something like that. So, she sends him these photos 00:23:52.740 --> 00:24:00.060 of her in different poses with different signs. Alright, West Virginia Chief of Police site down; 00:24:00.060 --> 00:24:06.540 tweeted about it. You’re in the news. That tweet’s done. You got the DPS Alabama Police Department; 00:24:06.540 --> 00:24:13.080 that’s been owned. At the bottom of that Pastebin is a picture of your girlfriend’s 00:24:13.080 --> 00:24:20.660 breasts in a bikini that says something like ‘PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w <3 u BiTch’s.’ 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:23.820 W0RMER: Yes, yes. 00:24:23.820 --> 00:24:32.940 JACK: Department of Safety; ‘Hacked by @AnonW0rmer for #OpPiggyBank.’ There’s a Pastebin link, 00:24:32.940 --> 00:24:44.700 #CabinCr3w, #Anonymous. ‘This CabinCr3w is proud to present and release texasdps.state.tx.us 00:24:44.700 --> 00:24:55.560 data.’ At the bottom is another – is the same female, your girlfriend, with scantly something-or 00:24:55.560 --> 00:25:04.620 another and it says ‘We are ALL Anonymous. We NEVER forget. We NEVER forget. <3 Anonw0rmer.’ 00:25:04.620 --> 00:25:08.940 February 10th, I mean, you’re just rapid-fire at this point. The very next day, 00:25:08.940 --> 00:25:16.320 Twitter user Anonw0rmer posts ‘My baby SETS standards! wAt U got?’ Then you’ve got like, 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:23.400 five images of her. #CabinCr3w. I have these images here, so you’ve got 00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:29.940 again, a bikini, no bottom but the bottom of her is covered up by a sign that says ‘Come at me bro. 00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:41.970 Anonw0rmer.’ Her underwear, her underwear is there and it says ‘Proudly poked by w0rmer. AnonLove.’ 00:25:41.970 --> 00:25:43.980 W0RMER: We’re so classy, by the way. 00:25:43.980 --> 00:25:49.140 JACK: Yeah, that’s – she’s got just real short-shorts on, 00:25:49.140 --> 00:25:53.400 and this one with no top but you can’t see her breasts; she’s turned with her 00:25:53.400 --> 00:25:58.200 back towards you and it says ‘W0rmer pwned your ass and mine. You mad, bro?’ 00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:03.540 W0RMER: I have a way of also inciting anger in people 00:26:03.540 --> 00:26:10.740 and I think that’s obvious too, in what I was doing. I was egging everybody on. 00:26:10.740 --> 00:26:16.620 But a little backstory on that; so as you can see, all of them are pretty in-your-face and they’re 00:26:16.620 --> 00:26:23.460 trying to get and investigate or really after me. I already knew the GPS Exif data was in them 00:26:23.460 --> 00:26:28.320 and so I had a whole workflow for that. I had my dirty images and then I would clean them 00:26:28.320 --> 00:26:35.160 and put them in another file. When I went to publish that, I went one, two, three, 00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:41.880 and so, man, I need one more photo. I grabbed the wrong one, put it in there, and hit tweet. 00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:47.580 JACK: [MUSIC] He accidentally posted one of her photos that he didn’t clean the 00:26:47.580 --> 00:26:53.880 metadata off of which means in the file was data of where that photo was taken. 00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:58.920 W0RMER: I slipped up and I just remember if there was a camera, 00:26:58.920 --> 00:27:08.880 right? Turning to the camera and being like, fuck. But maybe they’ll miss it, 00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:13.680 right? Maybe they just won’t – maybe they’ll run through the first three and be like eh, 00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:20.940 nothing here. That’s not what happened by the way, though; spoiler alert. 00:27:20.940 --> 00:27:26.280 JACK: The police were not happy with whoever Anonw0rmer was. I mean, how could they be? He 00:27:26.280 --> 00:27:30.480 was doxxing the police themselves. Of course, they want to know who was doing this and arrest 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:37.260 him. So, an investigation started. [MUSIC] A Special Agent for the cyber squad of the FBI 00:27:37.260 --> 00:27:42.060 began investigating him. He called up the West Virginia Police Department wanting to 00:27:42.060 --> 00:27:45.960 look at all the logs of the hack, and then the Alabama Police Department to see their logs, 00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:50.340 and then the Texas [00:30:00] Police Department to see them, too. To the FBI this all looked 00:27:50.340 --> 00:27:56.100 like it was exploiting the same SQL injection vulnerability. Not only that but Anonw0rmer was 00:27:56.100 --> 00:28:00.840 claiming responsibility for each of these hacks on Twitter so it obviously was the same person. 00:28:00.840 --> 00:28:09.060 But not only that; the logs of each of these hacks all seemed to be coming from the same IP address. 00:28:09.060 --> 00:28:13.980 The FBI learned this IP address was for a residential internet connection tha-t AT&T 00:28:13.980 --> 00:28:20.280 provided. The FBI submitted a warrant to AT&T asking for what customer had that IP? 00:28:20.280 --> 00:28:25.560 This led them to an apartment and person in Galveston, Texas which was exactly where 00:28:25.560 --> 00:28:30.780 w0rmer was living at the time. But it wasn’t w0rmer’s name or address; 00:28:30.780 --> 00:28:36.540 he was too clever for that. Instead, he hacked into his neighbor’s WiFi and did all these hacks 00:28:36.540 --> 00:28:40.740 from there. So, when the FBI called his neighbor, they didn’t really understand 00:28:40.740 --> 00:28:47.520 or know anything and this didn’t really help the investigation. It was kind of a dead-end. 00:28:47.520 --> 00:28:53.580 The FBI began looking at these photos that w0rmer was posting of his girlfriend. [MUSIC] W0rmer had 00:28:53.580 --> 00:29:00.180 erased the geolocation data of all these photos except for that one last photo and the FBI saw 00:29:00.180 --> 00:29:05.640 the longitude and latitude of where that photo was taken which was a house in South Victoria, 00:29:05.640 --> 00:29:11.880 Australia; w0rmer’s girlfriend’s house. The FBI looked up who lives there and found her name, 00:29:11.880 --> 00:29:17.820 and then the FBI looked up her Facebook profile and saw she’s in a relationship with a guy named 00:29:17.820 --> 00:29:27.120 Higinio Ochoa. Hm. The FBI continued to analyze all the stuff w0rmer posted. 00:29:27.120 --> 00:29:32.580 W0rmer posted other pictures, too; screenshots of the hacks he did, and the FBI examined each 00:29:32.580 --> 00:29:39.720 of these screenshots. The metadata was erased and cleaned but in the screenshot itself showed 00:29:39.720 --> 00:29:47.760 a username that was logged into one application. The username was Hig Ochoa which could be short 00:29:47.760 --> 00:29:56.100 for Higinio Ochoa which as a silent g in it. Next, the FBI did some open-source intelligence, just 00:29:56.100 --> 00:30:01.860 Googling things like putting w0rmer and Higinio Ochoa together and sure enough, these two names 00:30:01.860 --> 00:30:08.400 did have connections. There were some blog posts that connected both of these together, and the FBI 00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:15.780 learned that Higinio Ochoa was the neighbor of that person who they first tracked that IP to. 00:30:15.780 --> 00:30:22.140 With this, the FBI had enough information to positively believe that Higinio Ochoa 00:30:22.140 --> 00:30:28.080 was the name of the person conducting these hacks on the police departments. 00:30:28.080 --> 00:30:33.600 I mean yeah, walk me through how – between now and when you get caught. How did they catch you? 00:30:33.600 --> 00:30:36.960 W0RMER: I’m sitting there one day. I notice there’s a new Cisco wireless AP. 00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:41.880 JACK: Basically, he was in his apartment and he wanted to see what WiFi signals there were in the 00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:46.920 area. A new one popped up and he looked to see what brand of router was broadcasting this WiFi, 00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:51.150 because he was probably looking at this to see if he could hack into another neighbor’s WiFi. 00:30:51.150 --> 00:30:58.320 W0RMER: Huh, that’s weird. A, because Cisco’s not a brand you see in an apartment complex. 00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:03.960 It’s not – you’re usually AT&Ts or TP links or something cheesy like that. But this particular 00:31:03.960 --> 00:31:13.980 one was a Cisco. [MUSIC] So, cracked into that. Scanned, realized it was hooked up to a laptop. 00:31:13.980 --> 00:31:18.420 JACK: At the same time, construction started on the street outside his apartment. 00:31:18.420 --> 00:31:24.120 W0RMER: All of a sudden, it started getting roadwork done on it. In Texas, it’s pretty 00:31:24.120 --> 00:31:29.700 common but there was something strange about it. The people that would show up and they would 00:31:29.700 --> 00:31:37.200 act like they were working, right, but never do anything. I was like okay, something’s going on. 00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:42.540 I remember walking outside and seeing the actual undercover agent that was watching me, 00:31:42.540 --> 00:31:48.720 just smoking cigarettes, throwing them over the balcony. That was a tell, too; this dude 00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:52.320 had been here chain smoking for god knows how long, ‘cause I don’t just leave every day. 00:31:52.320 --> 00:31:56.760 JACK: He assumes he’s being watched both in real life and online. 00:31:56.760 --> 00:31:59.460 He feels too close to the fire. He closes shop. 00:31:59.460 --> 00:32:05.580 W0RMER: I was like well, that’s the guy, you know? I’m not gonna push him, I’m not gonna 00:32:05.580 --> 00:32:14.520 whatever. I’m done. It got to the point to where I didn’t want to do this anymore. I had done my job, 00:32:14.520 --> 00:32:21.200 I had done Occupy, I had done this. I had a beautiful new fiancé. I need to get on with life. 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:25.020 JACK: There’s a love story involved in this, too. I wasn’t expecting this. 00:32:25.020 --> 00:32:32.880 W0RMER: That, I think, is the loss of it, right? You have this angry adult who goes out and 00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:36.480 frickin’ wreaks havoc on a particular thing and 00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:40.980 here this beautiful Australian woman comes in and he’s like nah, I’m good. 00:32:40.980 --> 00:32:48.480 Just wants to sail away and be happy in Australia. [00:35:00] Yeah. I think 00:32:48.480 --> 00:32:52.320 it’s every nerd’s dream, right? Yeah, I totally met her in a hacker chat room, man. 00:32:52.320 --> 00:32:58.440 JACK: At this point he’s about thirty years old. It’s March 2012, and it’s just 10:30 a.m. 00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:00.600 W0RMER: I’m downloading this database. I wake up, 00:33:00.600 --> 00:33:02.580 I check on it. I’m like man, I need some fucking coffee. 00:33:02.580 --> 00:33:05.580 JACK: But it’s early for a hacker. While he’s getting his coffee, 00:33:05.580 --> 00:33:09.360 he’s really thinking he’s done with hacking. He just wants to be with 00:33:09.360 --> 00:33:13.980 this girl in Australia and forget about hacktivism, at least for now. 00:33:13.980 --> 00:33:20.220 W0RMER: I stumble over to the coffee machine, I turn on the coffee, it pours out. I made a 00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:26.220 whole cup of coffee, right. [JINGLING] So, I hear this jingling. I’m like what the fuck? 00:33:26.220 --> 00:33:30.780 I go and I go look through the peephole and I see the groundskeeper guy trying to let 00:33:30.780 --> 00:33:38.580 in what looks like five heavily armed men wearing ski masks and shit, right. [MUSIC] 00:33:38.580 --> 00:33:41.820 I’m drinking my coffee and in the back of my head, 00:33:41.820 --> 00:33:47.460 I’m like I have time to grab this thing and throw it in the fire and just let it burn. 00:33:47.460 --> 00:33:49.080 JACK: He’s referring to his laptop. 00:33:49.080 --> 00:33:56.580 W0RMER: I’ll open the door and I’ll plead not guilty. So, it did cross my mind. But at the 00:33:56.580 --> 00:34:02.640 end of the day, I’m just like you know what? I signed up for this. I knew this day was coming. 00:34:02.640 --> 00:34:10.140 So, I unbolted the doors, opened it up, and all you hear is ‘FBI! Hands up!’ Literally, 00:34:10.140 --> 00:34:17.640 I’m in my boxers with the cup of coffee. I’m just like, this is it, man. Let’s go. 00:34:17.640 --> 00:34:21.360 I asked the guy for my pants ‘cause they immediately went and put my 00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:24.870 hands in cuffs. Took my coffee; they didn’t give me my coffee. Assholes. 00:34:24.870 --> 00:34:26.220 JACK: Did they give you pants? 00:34:26.220 --> 00:34:30.780 W0RMER: They did let me wear pants, yes. They let me put my pants on. 00:34:30.780 --> 00:34:37.080 JACK: Now fully clothed, he’s an open book to the five, armed FBI and police officers in his 00:34:37.080 --> 00:34:40.860 apartment. They’re going through all his stuff and asking him a bunch of questions. 00:34:40.860 --> 00:34:49.920 W0RMER: I’ll cop to anything I did; you just ask me. You know what I mean? If I did it, I’ll say 00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:55.380 yeah, I did it. If I didn’t, no, I didn’t. He pretty much did what we just did; he printed 00:34:55.380 --> 00:35:01.320 out my timeline and just tweet by tweet, is this you? I’m like yup, that’s me. Is this you? Yup, 00:35:01.320 --> 00:35:11.640 that’s me. Is this you? Yup, that’s me. Is this you? Nope, that’s not me. I didn’t do any of that. 00:35:11.640 --> 00:35:14.160 That was it. But I mean, it was a shock to my whole family. 00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:21.120 JACK: [MUSIC] W0rmer’s real name is in fact Higinio, or Hig, for short. The FBI had the right 00:35:21.120 --> 00:35:27.480 guy and this is when everything that was dark is now exposed to the daylight. He led such different 00:35:27.480 --> 00:35:32.640 lives that his family didn’t even know he was a hacker. He didn’t tell them about the photos of 00:35:32.640 --> 00:35:37.200 the breasts or whose breasts they were, or that he had fallen in love with the woman behind them. 00:35:37.200 --> 00:35:42.120 W0RMER: They asked my family, you know what I mean? Like hey, what do you know about his 00:35:42.120 --> 00:35:47.040 Australian girlfriend? My family’s like, what the fuck are you talking about? He’s a nerd. 00:35:47.040 --> 00:35:52.440 He ain’t got no girlfriend. Oh no, he’s got an online girlfriend. No, 00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:53.580 he doesn’t have an online girlfriend. 00:35:53.580 --> 00:35:59.400 JACK: The FBI starts talking to Hig’s parents and that’s when his 00:35:59.400 --> 00:36:04.560 parents learn that he’s been engaged. The FBI agent says… 00:36:04.560 --> 00:36:10.200 W0RMER: They’re engaged. They’re just like, excuse me? My son’s engaged to an 00:36:10.200 --> 00:36:13.560 Australian woman? They’re like yeah. They’re like, you’re fucking crazy, 00:36:13.560 --> 00:36:17.160 dude. We don’t know what you’re talking about. It was a shock to everybody. 00:36:17.160 --> 00:36:22.320 JACK: The police process him, take him down to jail. He gets out on bail that day. He gets a 00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:26.640 lawyer and starts working on different kinds of plea deals he might have options for. Like, 00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:29.280 he’s willing to admit he’s guilty for all these things he’s done, 00:36:29.280 --> 00:36:33.960 so maybe by cooperating with the cops he might not get that hard of a sentence. 00:36:33.960 --> 00:36:39.120 He’s got a date set for this trial but in the meantime, he’s not allowed to use a computer 00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:46.680 at all. All his Skype and chat messages with his online girlfriend, they suddenly stopped. 00:36:46.680 --> 00:36:53.160 But love moves faster than the law and it transcends the internet. She doesn’t know why he’s 00:36:53.160 --> 00:36:57.840 suddenly stopped talking to her, so she starts trying to figure it out. [MUSIC] She learns he 00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:04.080 was arrested for hacking and with that, she feels a sense of loss. Just yesterday her relationship 00:37:04.080 --> 00:37:10.380 was getting hot and heavy but now it was suddenly gone. They were ripped apart from each other. 00:37:10.380 --> 00:37:20.580 This wasn’t okay for her. She was heartbroken. She told him I’m coming, Hig. Meet me at the airport. 00:37:20.580 --> 00:37:23.700 W0RMER: I’m sitting at this airport and my mom’s still completely shocked that 00:37:23.700 --> 00:37:29.220 I even talk to girls, more or less have a fiancé. 00:37:29.220 --> 00:37:43.200 All we know about her is she’s got big boobs, she’s blonde, and Australian. [AIRPLANE 00:37:43.200 --> 00:37:47.880 JETS] We’re sitting at the airport, we’re waiting for her to come in [00:40:00] and you’re just, 00:37:47.880 --> 00:37:56.280 you’re looking at the top of this escalator. The first blonde that comes over is a six-foot-tall 00:37:56.280 --> 00:38:04.320 blonde, looked almost like a dude, and I was just like oh great, here it goes. 00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:09.540 My mom just starts laughing. That’s what you get, right? You go online, you’re dating, 00:38:09.540 --> 00:38:13.620 you think you got this hot chick, it’s really – it’s another thirty-year old man, man. Good luck, 00:38:13.620 --> 00:38:20.220 good job, baby. Prison’s gonna do good for you. I was like Jesus, man, this sucks. 00:38:20.220 --> 00:38:23.640 Then she goes all the way down and she’s walking towards me. I’m just like Jesus, 00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:28.380 dude, please don’t be it. Please don’t – and she even stopped to look for directions, 00:38:28.380 --> 00:38:34.320 and then walks off. So, I’m like oh my god, thank god. Just as that 00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:42.060 walked away, here comes by 5’2 beautiful fiancé over the escalators, come down… 00:38:42.060 --> 00:38:47.700 KYLIE: He just ran up to me, gave me a giant hug, [MUSIC] and it was the best, 00:38:47.700 --> 00:38:53.220 to this day, the best hug I’ve ever gotten. It was just like, everything clicked into place. 00:38:53.220 --> 00:38:57.360 It was just – it was, I mean, I can still – I still get goosebumps 00:38:57.360 --> 00:39:00.480 thinking of that very first time that we met. It was just amazing. 00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:03.660 JACK: This is Kylie, the Australian girlfriend, 00:39:03.660 --> 00:39:10.380 his fiancé, the voice behind the breasts that are maybe the most famous hacker calling card 00:39:10.380 --> 00:39:15.420 in federal history. When you joined the chat room, what did you guys – how did you connect? 00:39:15.420 --> 00:39:19.740 KYLIE: He said to me tits or get the fuck out. [LAUGHING] 00:39:19.740 --> 00:39:24.360 JACK: What did you do after that? 00:39:24.360 --> 00:39:29.640 KYLIE: I had no idea what that meant so when he explained it to me, I thought you 00:39:29.640 --> 00:39:34.380 know what? I’m just gonna send this guy photos, so I sent him a couple of photos; 00:39:34.380 --> 00:39:40.740 one of me in a bikini that I had been in in Thailand recently, and then another one in a very, 00:39:40.740 --> 00:39:48.240 very tight black dress that I was wearing to a concert. I sent him a couple of pics. 00:39:48.240 --> 00:39:52.560 He’s like wow, she’s real. This is a girl, she has tits. She’s got great 00:39:52.560 --> 00:39:58.800 tits. We just started talking and it became romantic pretty quickly. 00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:05.280 He’s charming, he is a great social engineer, and he’s very smooth at getting – making girls 00:40:05.280 --> 00:40:12.860 take notice and so, that’s what happened. He was just really sweet and I fell for it. 00:40:12.860 --> 00:40:13.860 JACK: 00:40:13.860 --> 00:40:22.140 So, at some point he asked you to take specific photos that say like, ‘PwNd by w0rmer’ and stuff. 00:40:22.140 --> 00:40:26.100 KYLIE: He did, so he sent me a bunch of slogans. Okay, I’ve got a great body, 00:40:26.100 --> 00:40:31.980 and at the point in my life, I loved how I looked. Great body, I’m like yeah, why not? You’ve got it, 00:40:31.980 --> 00:40:39.240 flaunt it. I took these photos in various poses and when I saw them released, 00:40:39.240 --> 00:40:43.080 I didn’t have an issue with it. I had took, you know, printed out these signs and I 00:40:43.080 --> 00:40:49.260 held them up in different poses, different bikinis, and just sent them to him. I had no 00:40:49.260 --> 00:40:55.440 clue that it would have gone past – I mean, I had no idea, Jack. 00:40:55.440 --> 00:40:59.580 When he finally admitted he was a hacker and that he hacked, I didn’t understand what that meant. 00:40:59.580 --> 00:41:03.780 JACK: When she did learn he was a hacker she wasn’t entirely on board with it. 00:41:03.780 --> 00:41:08.340 KYLIE: Now, I’m gonna be clear with something; when I found out what he was hacking for, 00:41:08.340 --> 00:41:12.960 we had a huge fight about it because coming from – I was 00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:17.340 working as an immigration officer. I had that law enforcement background 00:41:17.340 --> 00:41:22.860 and we had a huge fight over the fact that he released the police officer’s names to 00:41:22.860 --> 00:41:26.820 the point where I’m like, what would you do if you hacked immigration? Would you release my details, 00:41:26.820 --> 00:41:34.860 too? We actually, if memory serves me correctly, we broke up for a few days over it. Anyway, 00:41:34.860 --> 00:41:41.040 while I don’t support what he did, I understand why he did it. I don’t support the hack. 00:41:41.040 --> 00:41:45.660 JACK: But she did love him. She loved how intelligent and passionate he was about 00:41:45.660 --> 00:41:51.120 things that were going on in the world, so while they disagreed on this one thing, they clicked on 00:41:51.120 --> 00:41:57.540 pretty much everything else. Now that she was in Texas with her love, her fiancé, she was happy. 00:41:57.540 --> 00:42:02.040 W0RMER: The court case was ongoing at the time so I was like man, we gotta get married, 00:42:02.040 --> 00:42:04.980 we gotta get married. We don’t have time to plan a big wedding or anything like 00:42:04.980 --> 00:42:09.540 that. Let’s go just grab a dress; I’ll grab the thing. We’ll find some close friends, 00:42:09.540 --> 00:42:13.500 we’ll grab them, and we’ll show up and we’ll just get married. That’s what we did. 00:42:13.500 --> 00:42:19.380 JACK: Isn’t it weird to arrive in a new country, marry somebody who’s gonna just disappear any day? 00:42:19.380 --> 00:42:26.340 KYLIE: Oh my god, when I look back at it, I think what the heck was I doing? 00:42:26.340 --> 00:42:33.720 In hindsight, it’s crazy. I mean, it is crazy. I tell people now; I met him on the internet. 00:42:33.720 --> 00:42:39.120 Ten days later, he proposed. Seven weeks later I flew here and six days later, 00:42:39.120 --> 00:42:44.640 we were married. Eight weeks and one day from the day we said hello, we were married. 00:42:44.640 --> 00:42:46.920 W0RMER: It was like okay, cool, now we’re married. [00:45:00] What 00:42:46.920 --> 00:42:51.900 comes next? That’s about the time when the sentencing came about. 00:42:51.900 --> 00:42:56.040 JACK: They had a few months’ time between when he got arrested and when he was going 00:42:56.040 --> 00:43:00.600 to be sentenced for his crimes. While he had been lucky in finding love, 00:43:00.600 --> 00:43:06.360 he wasn’t so lucky in court. For instance, he didn’t get lucky with his judge. 00:43:06.360 --> 00:43:13.020 W0RMER: Around the same time I got arrested, Anonymous had Doxxed a Texas judge, right? 00:43:13.020 --> 00:43:16.680 That Texas judge ends up being my judge. 00:43:16.680 --> 00:43:25.620 JACK: [MUSIC] An understandably upset judge gave Hig, our newlywed, 00:43:25.620 --> 00:43:30.060 twenty-seven months in prison and three years’ probation. 00:43:30.060 --> 00:43:40.500 W0RMER: And stuck me in Elkton, eventually, in Ohio. I was on a FCI, so 00:43:40.500 --> 00:43:48.600 I was essentially locked up with 95% pedophiles which – not a great fucking two years. 00:43:48.600 --> 00:43:55.620 JACK: But just a few days before going to prison, Kylie and Hig found out they were 00:43:55.620 --> 00:44:01.920 going to be parents. Kylie was pregnant and so after he goes off to prison, Kylie moves 00:44:01.920 --> 00:44:07.140 in with Hig’s parents and while the two first met on opposite sides of the world and they came 00:44:07.140 --> 00:44:14.760 together physically for a few months, they’re now being forced apart once again. Kylie spends a lot 00:44:14.760 --> 00:44:20.520 of time thinking about Hig now, and Hig spends a lot of time thinking about Kylie and his baby. 00:44:20.520 --> 00:44:23.460 W0RMER: I’m not gonna be there for the birth. I’m 00:44:23.460 --> 00:44:28.440 not gonna see his first walk. I’m not gonna be there for the first words. 00:44:28.440 --> 00:44:35.580 But you can’t – there’s a saying in prison; you do your time. Don’t let your time do you. 00:44:35.580 --> 00:44:40.800 JACK: Kylie was able to come visit him once in prison before she had the baby. It wasn’t easy. 00:44:40.800 --> 00:44:44.760 The prison didn’t want him to have visitors and there was this whole ordeal. The prison guards 00:44:44.760 --> 00:44:49.920 finally let them talk through a sort of TV phone system even though she was right there at the 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:55.980 prison where he was held. It was weird. She cried the whole time she was able to talk with him. 00:44:55.980 --> 00:45:00.300 She goes back to Texas and Hig’s parents help her plan for the baby. 00:45:00.300 --> 00:45:06.480 KYLIE: You know how you see those TV – that scene in a TV show where somebody looks like they’re in 00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:12.120 this fog, it’s all foggy and confusing? I kid you not, I came home from the hospital with 00:45:12.120 --> 00:45:18.540 this baby and that’s how I felt. It felt surreal. What the hell? I’m in America. 00:45:18.540 --> 00:45:22.980 JACK: She had a baby boy. They named him Brody. 00:45:22.980 --> 00:45:27.600 She wanted Hig to meet the baby, so she took the baby to prison. 00:45:27.600 --> 00:45:31.860 KYLIE: It was surreal; here I am, I’m taking this child of his in that’s seven weeks old 00:45:31.860 --> 00:45:38.760 that he’d never – he’d seen a couple of photos of. When they’re in prison, you can hug and 00:45:38.760 --> 00:45:43.560 kiss and hello, goodbye, and that’s it. You can’t touch, you can’t hold hands. If you do, 00:45:43.560 --> 00:45:49.560 the prison guards come and yell at you. But he was allowed to hold Brody so the entire time, he just 00:45:49.560 --> 00:45:53.280 held Brody and couldn’t stop looking at him. 00:45:53.280 --> 00:45:58.680 W0RMER: I don’t know how else to put it but after you just finally hold your firstborn child, 00:45:58.680 --> 00:46:01.320 the fact that you have to go back inside and some dude’s gonna look at 00:46:01.320 --> 00:46:06.420 your butthole to see if you have any drugs kind of takes the fun out of the moment. 00:46:06.420 --> 00:46:14.220 JACK: [MUSIC] Hig had to serve two years in prison. Kylie was a single parent for those 00:46:14.220 --> 00:46:20.340 two years which was really hard for her. He kept asking her to send stuff like books and 00:46:20.340 --> 00:46:25.260 printouts of articles and stuff like that which she was happy to do, but she was exhausted and 00:46:25.260 --> 00:46:30.480 couldn’t keep up. Other Anonymous members were helping him out too, going through her to send 00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:35.520 him stuff like money and letters. Anons knew that one of their members had fallen and they wanted 00:46:35.520 --> 00:46:42.180 to take care of him however they could. In their eyes he fell honorably serving a higher purpose. 00:46:42.180 --> 00:46:47.040 Their actions showed respect to him. While he saw her a couple of times in the first year 00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:53.160 in prison and would sometimes see pictures of his son, it was still a long wait ahead of him 00:46:53.160 --> 00:46:58.680 and Kylie had serious struggles in America. She often thought about moving back to Australia 00:46:58.680 --> 00:47:03.300 for two years and then coming back when he got out because in Australia, she could get support 00:47:03.300 --> 00:47:07.920 from her family; she knows the place better. It’s her home. But here, she’s in America, a 00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:15.780 place she barely knows, raising a kid to a husband who’s in prison. After two years of prison time, 00:47:15.780 --> 00:47:22.800 Hig gets out. He had to go to a halfway home in Texas a few hours away from Kylie, so Kylie goes 00:47:22.800 --> 00:47:27.060 to Austin and meets with his probation officer to try to figure out when she can see him. 00:47:27.060 --> 00:47:33.360 KYLIE: Get up there, move into the apartment. Again, Anonymous were the ones who got that 00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:39.540 apartment for us. I had a job lined up for him, we had an apartment. People moved us up there, 00:47:39.540 --> 00:47:46.380 they paid up. We will be forever indebted to Anonymous because they made it happen. Here 00:47:46.380 --> 00:47:52.680 am I and [00:50:00] Brody in this apartment. His probation officer comes to see us three 00:47:52.680 --> 00:47:56.580 days after I moved in. He’s just come to inspect the house. He’s like okay, 00:47:56.580 --> 00:48:03.300 the only thing is, you have to cut your internet off until we say that it’s okay to be put on. 00:48:03.300 --> 00:48:05.940 Okay, not a problem. She said okay, so I’m gonna go and see him at the 00:48:05.940 --> 00:48:11.160 halfway house. I’m gonna tell them he’s to be released. He’s got a great home to go to. 00:48:11.160 --> 00:48:13.320 JACK: Even though he was in the halfway home, 00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:16.440 it still took them two weeks before they could see each other. 00:48:16.440 --> 00:48:24.240 KYLIE: It’s funny you know, Brody, he had the most amazing long brown curly hair and he looked like 00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:30.480 a girl. I let it grow so long but I refused to cut my baby’s hair until daddy was there. Poor 00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:34.980 Brody, we’ll look back at his photos; he had these little hair clips, looking like a girl. I remember 00:48:34.980 --> 00:48:40.200 the first time taking Hig to the halfway house and we were able to get some scissors and we stood 00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:46.140 there in the walkway and cut his hair together. That was just – it was crazy. I’m standing in a 00:48:46.140 --> 00:48:51.300 halfway house, borrowing scissors from a prison guard or a halfway house guard, and cutting 00:48:51.300 --> 00:48:55.680 Brody’s hair for the very first time. I still have that hair. Like a crazy mother, I kept it. 00:48:55.680 --> 00:49:00.360 JACK: Eventually he finished his time in prison and his halfway house and his probation time, 00:49:00.360 --> 00:49:07.140 and he was once again a free man, free to move in with his wife and child. Even though they had 00:49:07.140 --> 00:49:11.820 been married for two years by the time he got out of prison, they still had a lot to learn 00:49:11.820 --> 00:49:17.880 about each other. Do you feel like you owe your wife still for helping you through all that? 00:49:17.880 --> 00:49:22.843 W0RMER: That is a loaded question; did she e-mail you right now? 00:49:22.843 --> 00:49:23.820 JACK: [LAUGHING] No. 00:49:23.820 --> 00:49:26.040 W0RMER: Did she e-mail you? 00:49:26.040 --> 00:49:30.780 JACK: Because I can just imagine it as married and having the kids; 00:49:30.780 --> 00:49:35.520 there’s all this stress. Like dude, come on, [MUSIC] I got your ass a job out of jail and 00:49:35.520 --> 00:49:39.840 I moved here for you. Come on, you’ve gotta at least get up and get the kid this morning. 00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:50.820 W0RMER: Well, the rule goes, if she was to die tomorrow, I owe her two years of solitude, 00:49:50.820 --> 00:49:53.760 guaranteed. I could die tomorrow and she could marry somebody immediately 00:49:53.760 --> 00:49:59.580 afterwards. When you’re in the prison and when you’re in doing the time, 00:49:59.580 --> 00:50:04.071 you’re not looking at the effort that it takes to keep you afloat, you know what I mean? 00:50:04.071 --> 00:50:04.860 JACK: Oh yeah. 00:50:04.860 --> 00:50:11.760 W0RMER: You’re trying to live in a place you don’t want to be. You’ve got other worries. 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:17.040 JACK: I don’t know her at all but I could just see someone playing that card like hey, you owe me on 00:50:17.040 --> 00:50:20.640 this so much for so many things, even eight years later. It’ll still come up sometimes. 00:50:20.640 --> 00:50:26.460 W0RMER: Well, I mean, she’s not vindictive. I think after eight years of marriage, 00:50:26.460 --> 00:50:31.680 or the last six, I think, I believe I’ve done pretty good at returning the favor. 00:50:31.680 --> 00:50:37.440 But yeah, it’s very much in the – I can’t play the pity card, right? Like oh, 00:50:37.440 --> 00:50:45.540 you don’t even love me. You know what I mean? That doesn’t work. My wife gave up her life, 00:50:45.540 --> 00:50:53.220 literally came over here for me. So, to say I owe her for two years is an understatement. I 00:50:53.220 --> 00:51:00.600 owe her for the entire time that she’s been over here and the time that she’s given up. 00:51:00.600 --> 00:51:03.997 Whether or not that works, I don’t know, I’m still living and breathing. She hasn’t poisoned me yet. 00:51:03.997 --> 00:51:04.320 KYLIE: Tonight’s the night. 00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:13.920 W0RMER: She says tonight’s the night, so maybe tonight. But otherwise yeah, otherwise 00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:14.880 all feels good. 00:51:14.880 --> 00:51:19.620 KYLIE: Let me tell you, up until about a year ago, that would come up a lot. I would say to 00:51:19.620 --> 00:51:23.280 him all the time I have give up my life, I have moved to this country, I have given you 00:51:23.280 --> 00:51:28.980 everything. When are you gonna grow up? When are you gonna start being the man I married? 00:51:28.980 --> 00:51:33.840 You know what? It was hard for him; it took him a long time to become back to who he was. Prison, 00:51:33.840 --> 00:51:40.140 he had it good in prison, but it still changed – prison’s not fun and he was really lost when he 00:51:40.140 --> 00:51:47.100 got out. We almost didn’t make it on so many occasions and it would come up all the time; 00:51:47.100 --> 00:51:53.520 I gave up everything for you, I gave up everything for you. Honestly, about a year ago, 00:51:53.520 --> 00:52:00.300 he just came back to the person that I knew he was. [MUSIC] I’ve stopped saying to him 00:52:00.300 --> 00:52:05.760 you owe me two years, you owe me two years. The last year of our marriage has been better than 00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:12.960 it’s ever been but we almost didn’t make it quite often and you know what? What held us together, 00:52:12.960 --> 00:52:19.140 for me, was I gave up my life, I gave up my country, I gave up a great career. 00:52:19.140 --> 00:52:24.000 I had just finished building a house, rented it out the month before for an investment property. 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:30.600 Because I sold it so quickly, I ended up making no money. I gave up everything. I refused to have to 00:52:30.600 --> 00:52:38.520 be stuck in America, divorced from my husband, and trapped here because we would never take either 00:52:38.520 --> 00:52:42.960 parent away from the kids. That was the thing; if I was gonna divorce him, I would be stuck in 00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:49.080 a country that no offense, I don’t want to be in unless I’m [00:55:00] married. That was my 00:52:49.080 --> 00:52:55.380 motivation. His motivation is you know, we’ve been through so much, we love each other, the kids. But 00:52:55.380 --> 00:53:00.780 that, for me, I was determined to not have done it all for nothing. Obviously, my kids, 00:53:00.780 --> 00:53:07.020 they’re absolutely worth it but on the other side – about a year ago we finally just fell 00:53:07.020 --> 00:53:11.700 into a very good groove but it took years. We almost didn’t make it, Jack. We almost didn’t. 00:53:11.700 --> 00:53:12.900 JACK: Wow. 00:53:12.900 --> 00:53:14.880 KYLIE: Yeah, it was crazy. 00:53:14.880 --> 00:53:19.980 JACK: So, if your kids grow up to become hacktivists, do you have any advice for them? 00:53:19.980 --> 00:53:23.100 KYLIE: [LAUGHING] After I 00:53:23.100 --> 00:53:29.100 finish screaming for like, three days straight, I will tell them do not do it. 00:53:29.100 --> 00:53:34.020 W0RMER: Yeah, this stuff can really hurt you in the bad end. But I’m a hacker; I’m born a hacker, 00:53:34.020 --> 00:53:36.600 I’ve been a hacker my entire life, and I expect my kids to be the same. 00:53:36.600 --> 00:53:45.000 KYLIE: I do not, do not at all and will never recommend hacktivism for anyone. I understand 00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:48.420 there are points, there are things that you want to change in this world, but let me tell 00:53:48.420 --> 00:53:55.080 you right now, Jack; nobody remembers that Hig hacked the cops because cops were being dicks. 00:53:55.080 --> 00:53:57.780 W0RMER: The best I could say is hey, if you’re willing to go out there, 00:53:57.780 --> 00:54:02.640 if that’s something you want to do, I can tell you right now it sucks and it’s a long, whole lot 00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:07.800 of suckiness for a long time. But don’t stand for something you’re not willing to fall for. 00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:13.620 KYLIE: Nobody is ever gonna remember that he hacked them to try to stop them from beating up 00:54:13.620 --> 00:54:19.320 other people. All that they are going to remember is that he hacked the police. We have been, for 00:54:19.320 --> 00:54:25.320 the last eight years, to this day – oh my god and please, if nothing else, please play this part; 00:54:25.320 --> 00:54:32.040 people still, after eight years, won’t employ him because they are scared he’s going to hack 00:54:32.040 --> 00:54:39.420 them. He is not gonna lose his family to hack. If my kids ever want to get into hacktivism – if 00:54:39.420 --> 00:54:44.880 I have to lock them up in a room for ten years, I will do that because I refuse to let that happen. 00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:52.320 We have been homeless, we have been hungry, we’ve had – he’s been offered job after job 00:54:52.320 --> 00:54:58.080 that he’s supposed to start the following week that gets canceled the Friday before, offers of 00:54:58.080 --> 00:55:05.520 $125,000. [MUSIC] Jack, we have been homeless to the point that our pipes froze, we had holes 00:55:05.520 --> 00:55:11.040 – it was holes in the winter, it was horrible. I will never ever recommend hacktivism to anyone. 00:55:11.040 --> 00:55:15.660 If you want to make a point, if you want to change the world, then do not put yourself at 00:55:15.660 --> 00:55:20.400 risk because at the end of the day, whatever you’re trying to rectify is not gonna be 00:55:20.400 --> 00:55:25.980 rectified. All that’s gonna end up is that you’re gonna end in prison. Prison’s the easy part; 00:55:25.980 --> 00:55:29.700 you’ve got two years in prison, ten years in prison, whatever. That’s the easy part because 00:55:29.700 --> 00:55:34.800 for the rest of your life you are going to be turned down for employment. People are gonna 00:55:34.800 --> 00:55:40.980 be scared that you’re gonna hack and it’s going to ruin so many aspects of your life. 00:55:40.980 --> 00:55:47.340 I can not tell you the struggle even after eight years; hacktivism is not worth it. 00:55:47.340 --> 00:55:51.240 Find another outlet. Find a better way to do something because the only thing 00:55:51.240 --> 00:55:55.880 you’re gonna change is the fact that you will ruin the rest of your life. 00:55:55.880 --> 00:56:03.000 JACK: Hig and Kylie are still together today after eight years of marriage. Or six years, 00:56:03.000 --> 00:56:07.800 however you want to see it. In that time, they’ve had two kids together. 00:56:07.800 --> 00:56:12.120 Despite all the separations and reunions and struggles, they’re doing pretty good now. 00:56:12.120 --> 00:56:22.140 JACK (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to our guests this episode Hig and Kylie. 00:56:22.140 --> 00:56:25.020 I didn’t know I was getting into a love story when I started this but here it is, 00:56:25.020 --> 00:56:28.860 happily ever after and all that. This show is created by me, kidvid19, 00:56:28.860 --> 00:56:33.840 Jack Rhysider. This episode was produced by the resilient Jake Warga, sound design by the 00:56:33.840 --> 00:56:38.700 fine-tuned Andrew Meriwether, and editing help from the sparkling Damienne. Our theme music is 00:56:38.700 --> 00:56:43.260 by the book-writing Breakmaster Cylinder. Even though when I show my password to other people, 00:56:43.260 --> 00:56:48.360 they say it’s very strong, I still sometimes get hacked; this is Darknet Diaries.