The threats started in spring. In April 2024, a mysterious someone using the online handles “Waifu” and “Judische” began posting death threats on Telegram and Discord channels aimed at a cybersecurity researcher named Allison Nixon. “Alison [sic] Nixon is gonna get necklaced with a tire filled with gasoline soon,” wrote Waifu/Judische (both words with offensive connotations). “Decerebration is my fav type of brain death, thats whats gonna happen to alison Nixon.” It wasn’t long before others piled on. Someone shared AI-generated nudes of Nixon.
These anonymous personas targeted Nixon because she had become a formidable threat: As chief research officer at the cyber investigations firm Unit 221B, named after Sherlock Holmes’s apartment, she had built a career tracking cybercriminals and helping get them arrested. For years she had lurked quietly in online chat channels or used pseudonyms to engage with perpetrators directly while piecing together clues they’d carelessly drop about themselves and their crimes. This had helped her bring to justice a number of cybercriminals—especially members of a loosely affiliated subculture of anarchic hackers who call themselves the Com. But members of the Com aren’t just involved in hacking; some of them also engage in offline violence against researchers who track them. This includes bricking (throwing a brick through a victim’s window) and swatting (a dangerous type of hoax that involves reporting a false murder or hostage situation at someone’s home so SWAT teams will swarm it with guns drawn). Members of a Com offshoot known as 764 have been accused of even more violent acts—including animal torture, stabbings, and school shootings—or of inciting others in and outside the Com to commit these crimes.
