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The Latest Case of Cybercrime: A Strobe That Induces Seizures Epilepsy Foundation Was Targeted in Mass Strobe Cyberattack
(about 8 hours later)
HOUSTON — An unusual case of cybercrime is playing out in a Dallas courtroom on Monday, with a Maryland man expected to plead guilty to aggravated assault. The victim was a journalist and author. The weapon was a GIF, or animated image, sent on Twitter. And the motive appeared at least in part to be the victim’s criticisms of President Trump. HOUSTON — Hackers sent videos and images of flashing strobe lights to thousands of Twitter followers of the Epilepsy Foundation last month in a mass cyberattack that apparently sought to trigger seizures in those with epilepsy, the foundation said on Monday.
The case has played out for years in the courts, and the scheduled guilty plea by the defendant, John Rayne Rivello, would be one of the first times the sending of a seizure-inducing tweet was successfully prosecuted as a crime. The series of online attacks was particularly reprehensible, it said in a statement, because it took place during National Epilepsy Awareness Month.
Mr. Rivello was accused of sending a Twitter message featuring a blinding strobe light to an epileptic author who immediately suffered a seizure upon viewing it in December 2016 in Dallas. The message read, in capital letters: “You deserve a seizure for your posts.” “These attacks are no different than a person carrying a strobe light into a convention of people with epilepsy and seizures, with the intention of inducing seizures and thereby causing significant harm to the participants,” said Allison Nichol, director of legal advocacy for the nonprofit foundation, which finances epilepsy research and connects people to treatment and support.
Investigators found several digital clues, including a message they said Mr. Rivello sent to other Twitter users reading, “I hope this sends him into a seizure,” and screenshots showing the victim’s Wikipedia page with a fake date of death and epilepsy.com’s list of epilepsy seizure triggers. The foundation reported 30 such attacks in the first week of November, and said it had filed complaints with law enforcement authorities, including with the United States Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where the group’s headquarters are. It was unclear how many people clicked on the videos and animated images known as GIFs.
The victim, Kurt Eichenwald, the author of “The Informant” and a reporter for The New York Times from 1986 to 2006, had been critical of Mr. Trump, then a candidate for president, and had appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show just before he received the strobe-light message in 2016. Cyberattacks intended to trigger harmful seizures in those with epilepsy have become more common in recent years, particularly after a Texas author was targeted in 2016.
Mr. Eichenwald’s attacker also appeared to be motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, according to court documents: The Wikipedia page that Mr. Rivello had copied included anti-Semitic references, and the Twitter handle Mr. Rivello used was named @jew_goldstein, with the name Ari Goldstein. In that attack, John Rayne Rivello, a Marine Corps veteran from Maryland, was accused of using Twitter to send a GIF with a blinding strobe light to an epileptic author, Kurt Eichenwald, who had written critically about Donald J. Trump and his supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Rivello, 32, a veteran who lived in Salisbury, Md., was arrested in 2017 and charged in federal court with cyberstalking. Later that year, federal prosecutors dropped the charge, allowing the Dallas County District Attorney’s office to proceed with their case against him. Court records in the case indicated the scheduled guilty plea on Monday. Mr. Rivello had been scheduled to plead guilty on Monday to a charge of aggravated assault in the case, which was filed in Dallas and became a legal testing ground for the limits of free speech and criminal assault in cases of cyberattack.
A lawyer for Mr. Rivello, Matthew Alford, did not respond to a request for comment. The hearing, however, was postponed until January. A lawyer for Mr. Rivello, Matthew Alford, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Eichenwald’s lawyers have likened the attack to sending a bomb in the mail or anthrax in an envelope. Two months before the Twitter attack, Mr. Eichenwald, who was a reporter for The New York Times from 1986 to 2006, had written an opinion piece in Newsweek headlined “How Donald Trump Supporters Attack Journalists.” In the column he described death threats he had received because he had written critically about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Eichenwald told investigators he had stepped into his home office that evening in 2016 and clicked on the message from @jew_goldstein. The strobe light GIF caused an immediate seizure that lasted about eight minutes, court documents showed. Mr. Eichenwald’s wife, Theresa, walked into his office, called 911 and took a picture of the strobing light on his computer with her cellphone. The threats, Mr. Eichenwald wrote, were “sometimes just general invocations that I should die, sometimes more specific threats that I should be shot or ‘lynched,’ as one Trump fan wrote.” He added, “One Trump fan mentioned he knew which schools my children attended, and correctly named them.”
“This is his wife,” she replied to the Twitter account, “you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.” In December 2016, after publication of the Newsweek piece, Mr. Eichenwald told investigators that he had stepped into his home office one evening and clicked on a message from someone identified as @jew_goldstein. It contained a strobe light GIF and a declaration in capital letters: “You deserve a seizure for your posts.”
Federal health officials estimate that 3.4 million Americans are affected by epilepsy, a serious brain disorder that produces seizures that can vary in intensity, from staring spells to severe shaking and collapsing to the floor. Looking at the strobe caused an immediate seizure that lasted about eight minutes, court documents showed.
“He slumped over in his chair,” said Steven Lieberman, Mr. Eichenwald’s lawyer. “He was unresponsive and he probably would have died but for the fact that his wife heard a noise — she’s a physician — and she pulled him away from the screen and got him onto the floor.”
Mr. Eichenwald’s wife, Theresa, called 911 and took a picture of the strobing light on his computer with her cellphone. “This is his wife, you caused a seizure,” she replied to the Twitter account. “I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.”
Investigators found several digital clues they said led them to Mr. Rivello, including a message he had sent to other Twitter users that read, “I hope this sends him into a seizure.” They also found a screenshot on Mr. Rivello’s iCloud account showing Mr. Eichenwald’s Wikipedia page with a fake date of death as well as a screenshot of a list of epilepsy seizure triggers that had been copied from an epilepsy information website.
The faked Wikipedia page also included anti-Semitic references, according to court documents, and the Twitter handle @jew_goldstein, with the name Ari Goldstein, was traced to Mr. Rivello.
Mr. Eichenwald, 58, has written that he is Episcopalian with a Jewish father.
Mr. Rivello, 32, who lived in Salisbury, Md., was arrested in 2017 and charged in federal court with cyberstalking. Federal prosecutors dropped the charge that year, but the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office proceeded with a prosecution on state charges.
Mr. Eichenwald still suffers from the seizure, both physically and emotionally, and continues to receive similar cyberattacks, his lawyer said.
“For a long time he has been unable to hold his grandchild for fear that his lack of control over his limbs will potentially cause an injury to the child,” he said.
Mr. Eichenwald filed a lawsuit against Mr. Rivello in federal court in Maryland for battery and other claims. The defense moved to dismiss it, arguing in part that the battery claim could not be supported because Mr. Eichenwald did not claim that any physical contact had occurred.
But Chief Judge James K. Bredar of the United States District Court in the District of Maryland allowed the lawsuit to proceed, writing that the “novelty of the mechanism by which the harm was achieved” did not make the alleged actions any less of a wrongful act.