They say Columbia is just one of five universities they’ve penetrated. Elizabeth Lopatto is a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg. The ultimate source for The New York Times’ story about Zohran Mamdani’s college application is an open secret. It’s an anime-loving neo-Nazi whose hobbies include furry drawings, posting fan art of a video game character, and hacking universities. On X, the alleged hacker is followed by New York Times freelancer Benjamin Ryan, who was the first byline on the Mamdani story. The alleged hacker uses an online handle that is a racial slur, so I will be referring to them as the Anime Nazi; they have taken credit for five hacks of universities. Three of them, as first reported by Bloomberg, targeted the University of Minnesota, New York University, and Columbia University. Social media reviewed by The Verge — including X and fediverse accounts — shows a series of reposts of statements and images such as swastikas, “miss u hitler,” and “minorities have no place in our world.” The Anime Nazi themselves posted such things as “I am racist,” “I am violently racist toward black people,” and a picture of a unicorn sitting on a swastika. (…) This alleged hacker’s racial animus aligns with the recent Republican war on higher education. It also aligns with a turn from certain Silicon Valley circles against elite universities. Universities aren’t just politically endangered — they are, in the hacker’s own words, “soft targets.” “Universities have basically the most vulnerable networks that exist in my experience,” the Anime Nazi wrote. “Massive networks with huge surface area and a lot of legacy systems.” They also generally spend less on security than private companies. Unless the hacker is caught or America’s universities seriously upgrade their security quickly, the Anime Nazi could very well strike again.
via theverge: This ‘violently racist’ hacker claims to be the source of The New York Times’ Mamdani scoop