LINDON, UT (AP) - A member of the GNAA trolling organization was arrested Thursday morning at his Lindon home following the devastating crapflood he allegedly organized on the Slashdot.org Web site Wednesday evening. Police were able to successfully track down the suspect by tracking the IP address he used to brag about his exploits in the hours following the attack.
The attack, directed at an article on BSD, began at 9:00 PM MST (0400 GMT) and abruptly stopped 1 hour and 33 minutes later. The crapflood consisted of over 1,000 comments, and rendered the discussion virtually unreadable at a threshold of 0 or -1. It is thought to be the largest crapflood in the history of the site. This attack comes amid a recent spate of similar attacks against weblogs. One Slashdot editor whose site was vandalized responded by disabling all comments to his personal site and deleting his entire archive of blog posts.
Editors responded to the attack by adjusting the "lameness filter" and moderating the crapflood comments to -1. Some have suggested that this attack may reignite the debate on the proposed permanent disabling of anonymous posting on Slashdot.
Crapflooding of this magnitude is a rare occurrence on Slashdot, thanks to a variety of anti-troll measures that have been implemented over the years by the site's editors. Because comments cannot be submitted within 2 minutes of each other, and repeated downward moderation results in an IP ban, it is necessary to compile a long list of proxies in order to create a high-volume crapflood. It is believed that several GNAA members cooperated in Wednesday's attack.
The GNAA, or Gay Nigger Association of America, founded in 2003, is a trolling organization known primarily for its frequent boilerplate postings. The text, designed to be offensive, contains numerous racial slurs, links to pornographic web sites, and has recently been updated with text insulting the Slashdot editorial staff. Rob Malda has indicated in his journal that he considers the GNAA to be part of an "axis of abuse," along with Trollkore and anti-slash.org.
The GNAA member arrested this morning is known only by his online name Lysol. His real name has been withheld because he is a juvenile.
If convicted on all counts, "Lysol" could be sentenced to a maximum of 5 years hard labor, which would likely consist of answering customer support calls for America Online. Because of his age, he is not eligible to receive the goatse penalty in the state of Utah.
Anti-slash.org has issued a statement condemning yesterday's attack and emphasized that it is in no way affiliated with the GNAA, though it does support GNAA actions as long as they are in line with its stated mission.
About Slashdot:Slashdot, founded in 1997, is a popular science and technology website known for its in-depth discussions on a variety of topics. It is also a popular target of trolls, in large part because the site invites and in many ways encourages competitive manipulation of its moderation system.
