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American hacker Jester warns Russia to stop interfering with U.S. election

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Jester hacker
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The American vigilante hacker known as Jester (whose signature graphic is shown above) took a swipe at Russia for hacking U.S. sites. The self-described “gray hat” hacker who calls himself “Jester” hacked the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website Friday night. His message: “Stop attacking Americans,” according to CNNMoney.

Anyone who visited the Ministry website after the hack first heard the intentionally loud, annoying, attention-demanding dial tone sound that plays just before American emergency broadcast civil alert messages. Jester’s letter to the Ministry displayed in full on the site’s homepage. The letter, which no longer appears on the site but was still visible Saturday, went into detail about the activities to which The Jester objected.

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As summarized by CNNMoney, Jester’s message was, “Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message … Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed.”

Jester’s complaints about Russian hacking included alleged Russian interfering with American politics. Recently 17 U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russian agencies of being behind hacks into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, leaking information to influence the election toward Donald Trump and away from Hillary Clinton. Russia is also accused of supplying hacked and stolen emails to WikiLeaks.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has denied Russian involvement with DNC or other hacking, but the Jester called him out for it. “Let’s get real, I know it’s you, even if by proxy, and you know it’s you. Now, get to your room. Before I lose my temper.”

The Jester, who in the past has actively attacked terrorist activities, told CNNMoney this weekend that his frustration over Friday’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that overloaded significant internet sites in the U.S. led him to attack the Russian Ministry site.

In previous attacks, Jester has alerted federal agencies about potential terrorist threats he learned about by hacking into communications forums. He has also taken down jihadist websites.

There are many Jester imitators, but he has a public Twitter account and a blog. In 2015 CNNMoney profiled the Jester, who claims to be a former U.S. soldier who worked in computer security.

“I realized something needed to be done about online radicalization and ‘grooming’ of wannabe jihadis, and we didn’t have mechanisms to deal with it,” Jester was quoted the CNNMoney profile. “I decided to start disrupting them.”

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