Jacob Appelbaum
American computer security researcher and journalist (born 1 April 1983) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jacob Appelbaum (born April 1, 1983)[6] is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker.
Jacob Appelbaum | |
---|---|
Born | (1983-04-01) April 1, 1983 (age 41) |
Citizenship | American |
Known for |
|
Awards | 2014 Henri Nannen Prize |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computer security, Cryptography |
Institutions | University of Washington,[1] Eindhoven University of Technology,[3] Noisebridge,[4] WikiLeaks |
Doctoral advisor | Tanja Lange, Daniel J. Bernstein[3][5] |
Appelbaum studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor Project, a free software network designed to provide online anonymity, until he stepped down from his position after multiple victims came forward with sexual abuse and rape allegations in 2016.[7][8][9] He was among several people to work with NSA contractor Edward Snowden's top secret documents released in 2013.[10] His journalistic work has been published in Der Spiegel and elsewhere. Appelbaum is also known for representing WikiLeaks.[2] He has displayed his art in a number of institutions across the world and has collaborated with artists such as Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, and Ai Weiwei.[11]
Under the pseudonym "ioerror," Appelbaum was an active member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective from 2008[8] to 2016, when sexual abuse allegations led to him being the only person to ever be ejected from the group.[12] He was the co-founder of the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge with Mitch Altman. He worked for Kink.com[13] and Greenpeace[14] and volunteered for the Ruckus Society and the Rainforest Action Network.[2]
Many of these organizations, as well as his employer Tor, ended their association with Appelbaum in June 2016 following allegations of sexual abuse.[12][15][16][17][18][19] After a seven-week investigation led by an outside investigator, Tor concluded that many of the allegations of misconduct were accurate.[20][21] Appelbaum has denied the allegations.[22] Various activists and others publicly supported Appelbaum, voicing concerns about due process, trial by social media, and questioning the claims,[23][24][25] while others credit the incident with changing the information security community's attitude towards sheltering known abusers.[5] The affair has had repercussions in the online privacy advocacy world.[26] U.S. news media treated the allegations as credible,[20][21] and reactions in Germany were mixed.[27][28]