Hi and welcome to Sab Reasons Malicious Life, I'm Ren Levy.

On March 5, 2012, one of the strangest cyber attacks in history took place on Twitter.

But some people claim it never really happened.

Here are the facts, A hacker who identifies as the

Jester known for claiming responsibility for attacks on anti-American targets

replaced his usual Twitter profile image, a drawing of a honey queen with a QR code.

Anyone who foolishly scanned the code fell into a trap.

A few days after the attack, the jester announced that he siphoned all the data on the mobile devices that scanned his QR code.

If the information belonged to one of the quote-unquote bad guys, that's how

the gesture refers to his enemies, it was presumably sent to the FBI. But the funny thing about this QR code attack is that we don't have any

proof that it actually happened. For all we know, it could have been just a well-told story, nothing more.

In fact, the Jester himself didn't seem interested in proving that he ever broke into anything

using that QR code.

So what happened on March 5, 2012?

Was it an actual attack or simply a PR stunt.

The jester is a hacktivist, a hacker with a political agenda.

Most hacktivists are anti-government, like Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange, whose stories we covered

in episode 10 of malicious life, or even just plain anarchists.

The Jester, however, is an example and probably the most famous one of a patriotic pro-American

hackivist. As you may recall, 2009 was a very intense year for the U.S. Army troops

fighting in Afghanistan. In December 2009, the Taliban attacked Forward Operating Base Chapman two miles east of the city of Kusht in Afghanistan.

The attack resulted in the deaths of at least six CIA officers.

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