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Early Life and Education

Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer was born in Arkansas in 1985. His family includes both Jewish and Native American ancestry; his mother has described him as coming from a "large, mixed-race family" with Jewish lineage "on both sides." At age 14, in 1999, he enrolled at James Madison University to study mathematics but dropped out the following year.

Early Hacking and Trolling Activity

Before gaining wider notoriety, Auernheimer was profiled by several media outlets, including The New York Times, in connection with his hacking and trolling activities. In that interview he made a number of unverified claims, including membership in a hacker group called "the organization" that allegedly earned $10 million annually, and ownership of a Rolls-Royce Phantom. He also claimed responsibility for the harassment of author and game developer Kathy Sierra, which included posting false personal information about her online — among it her home address and Social Security number — leading her to withdraw from online activity for several years.

Auernheimer was a member of the Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA), an anti-blogging trolling group, and served at one point as its president. Several members of Goatse Security who were involved in the later AT&T incident were also GNAA members.

AT&T Data Breach and Federal Prosecution

In June 2010, Auernheimer, as a member of the hacker group Goatse Security, helped expose a vulnerability in AT&T's publicly accessible infrastructure that allowed the collection of email addresses associated with iPad users. The group harvested data belonging to approximately 114,000 users — including celebrities, government officials, and military personnel — and disclosed the flaw to Gawker Media before notifying AT&T.

The FBI opened an investigation, and in January 2011 federal authorities charged Auernheimer with one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and one count of fraud. A federal grand jury in Newark, New Jersey, formally indicted him in July 2011. During the investigation, a separate raid on his Arkansas home resulted in state drug charges, though those were dropped following his federal arrest.

On November 20, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. He was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $73,000 in restitution. Civil rights lawyer and George Washington University Law School faculty member Orin Kerr joined his legal team pro bono in March 2013.

Conviction Vacated

On April 11, 2014, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Auernheimer's conviction on the grounds that venue in New Jersey was improper, as neither Auernheimer, his co-conspirators, nor AT&T's servers were located in New Jersey at the time of the breach. The court did not rule on the substantive question of whether the access itself was unlawful, though it noted skepticism about the original conviction given that no passwords had been circumvented and only publicly accessible information had been obtained. Auernheimer was released from prison the same day, having served approximately 13 months.

Post-Prison Activities

Following his release, Auernheimer lived in Lebanon, Serbia, and Ukraine. In 2016, he stated in an interview that he was residing in Kharkiv. The Southern Poverty Law Center later reported that he relocated to Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, in 2017.

Shortly after his release, he disclosed plans to launch a hedge fund called TRO LLC, which would identify publicly traded companies with software privacy flaws, take short positions in them, and then alert the media.

Alt-Right and Extremist Affiliations

In October 2014, Auernheimer published an article in The Daily Stormer in which he publicly identified himself as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi. In 2016, he used an automated tool to send racist and antisemitic flyers bearing swastikas to thousands of unsecured printers at universities and other locations across the United States, claiming responsibility for approximately 50,000 such flyers. He described finding over one million vulnerable devices during the operation.

By 2017, Auernheimer was reported to be working as webmaster for The Daily Stormer. An SPLC analyst described him and site founder Andrew Anglin as "primary innovators" in the use of online trolling by right-wing extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes him as "a neo-Nazi white supremacist" known for "extremely violent rhetoric advocating genocide of non-whites."

An email leak published by BuzzFeed News in October 2017 revealed that Auernheimer had been in contact with Milo Yiannopoulos, who had sought his advice on an article about the alt-right.

Cultural References

Auernheimer is the inspiration for the 2013 song "Life: The Biggest Troll [Andrew Auernheimer]," the final track on the album Because the Internet by Childish Gambino.