By ADAM KLASFELD
BALTIMORE (CN) - A "theological investigator" broke into a database
of unpublished manuscripts by a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist
Church to hawk the documents online, the Ellen G. White Estate claims in
Federal Court.
White (1827-1915) "was a co-founder of
the Seventh-day Adventist Church ... and revered messenger of God,"
according to the complaint.
An ardent abolitionist and
vegetarian, White told her followers she experienced religious visions
in 1845, which she chronicled in writings that laid the philosophical
groundwork of the world's 12th-largest religious sect.
Seventh-day Adventist Church adherents
believe in the absolute infallibility of Scripture, pitting most
members against abortion, homosexuality and birth control.
White's critics, most notably University of California at Berkeley's
science historian Ronald Numbers, accused her of plagiarizing her
visions from mundane health reformers of her day. She wrote 40 books and
more than 5,000 articles, and her estate claims copyrights to more than
50,000 pages of her writings.
Lead defendant Brendan
Knudson, who calls himself a "private detective, specializing in
theological and historical investigations," has tried to unearth the
unpublished pages since 2006, the estate says in its lengthy complaint.
The estate claims that Knudson sought help from hackers to break
into its database after the organization rebuffed his demands for
unrestricted access.
"On January 13, 2012, Knudson,
under the alias 'GirdedSword,' registered his profile on an Internet
forum located at www.hackforums.net ('Hack Forums'), used by computer
hackers with the purpose of communicating, organizing and hiring
hackers," the complaint states.
"Knudson frequently
used the alias 'GirdedSword' or 'WithGirdedSword' for communication
across the Internet and social media, such as: on Twitter
'@withgirdedsword'; on Skype 'withgirdedsword,' on his personal blog
'With Girded Sword.' ...
"After registering on Hack
Forums, Knudson engaged in a determined and aggressive effort to hack
into the Estate's technologically protected website. ... He requested
help, posting numerous messages on the Hack Forums, all with the intent
of recruiting others to help him access 'thousands and thousands' of SDA
Prophet Ellen White's 'unpublished letters and manuscripts' [i.e. EGW
Protected Works] from an 'online' 'password protected database' found at
www.egwwritings.org. Some of Knudson's posts were deceptively entitled
'Unpublished Religious Database,' ... or 'Sensitive Website Information
Download Hack.' ...
"Knudson indicated that his
intention was 'to perform a public service and acquire the unpublished
writings of a 'prophet' of a particular religious institution ... to put
this information in the hands of the public.' ... Additionally, he
wrote, 'This is urgent, and I am willing to pay on acquisition of the
information,'" the complaint states. (Citations omitted)
The
estate claims that Knudson found as many as 20 John Does willing to help
him hack. From Feb. 17 to April 9 this year, the database sustained
attacks from users as far and wide as Armenia and Brazil, the estate
says.
Knudson, originally from Australia, lives in
Armenia, the estate says. It claims that an investigation into the
attack yielded evidence that tied Knudson to it.
"Significantly, the SQL injection inquiries that were contained in the
web server logs match exactly the SQL inquires posted on the Hack Forums
by Knudson and the others," the complaint states.
"Structured Query Language," or SQL, refers to questions written in
database language intended to extract the contents of the database, the
Adventists say.
Unable to breach a second level of
protection, Knudson returned to Hacking Forums on March 1 asking users
to decrypt several passwords, which the users provided, according to the
complaint.
The estate claims that Knudson successfully swiped 8,300 documents by the end of the month.
On March 20, he bought three domains, unpublishedellenwhite.com,
ellenwhiteletters.com and ellenwhitemanuscripts.com from
WildWestDomains.com, according to the complaint.
WildWestDomains.com resells domains from the better-known company, GoDaddy.
The complaint names those two companies as defendants, along with other dot-coms Webs Inc., HostGator.com, Domains By Proxy and PayPal.
The estate claims that Knudson worked under the alias "SDAnonymous,"
but left his digital fingerprints and address on his PayPal agreement
to sell the unpublished White writings.
It claims that Knudson
marketed the writings by sending an email blast to more than 1,000
addresses that he swiped from the web.
He compromised
his anonymity again by promising readers of "Adventist Today" that the
unpublished documents just needed "a few tweaks" before he publicly
released them, the estate claims.
"In response to an
article published in 'Adventist Today' on March 27, 2012, regarding the
recent publication of Ellen G. White's works, Unpublished Ellen White, a
website owned by Knudson, proved his intimate inside working knowledge
of the plaintiff's EGW Writings Database, when he stated that to release
the unpublished writings would involve only a 'few tweaks' and 'some
minor adjustments to the Estate's already public website and everything
would be available to anyone,'" the complaint states. "In fact, for
months, Knudson and his co-conspirators attempted to break plaintiff's
website's security in order to illegally copy the EGW Protected Works."
The estate seeks an injunction and damages for violations of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Stored
Communications Act and other laws.
It is represented by Arnold Lutzker.
