Why I Told Anonymous to Kiss My Ass

Dana White, President of Ultimate Fighting Championship, decided to fight back when hacker group Anonymous attacked his company.

Michael Muller

Dana White, President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, didn't back down to hacker attacks.

Early this year, after its parent company came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the mixed-martial-arts promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship was attacked by the hacker group Anonymous. As told to J.J. McCorvey

I was in Chicago for a fight when I found out these Anonymous guys had started crashing our site. During an interview, I looked right into the camera and dared them to do it again. I said, Who do you think I am, eBay? I'm in the fight business. I could give a shit if you knock my website down. Do it again! Go ahead. I dare you!

You're gonna send some pizzas to my house and put my Social Security number out? Who gives a shit? If people really wanted to get your Social Security number, I'm sure they could find it. I'm supposed to bow down to you guys now? I'm going to come after you harder. If you want to fight me, you better pack a f'ing lunch, man. Because we're gonna go until somebody wins and somebody loses.

You should have seen the kind of tweets their Twitter followers were sending me. All these mysterious threats, like, "We're watching you" and "We can find you." I told them, Come find me, you f---in' nerds. Here's my hotel. I'm in Chicago. Come find me.

It was a Twitter war for days. And that's when it gets fun. You get these guys engaged, you get 'em going, and that's when you get the FBI involved. Because there's so much piracy of UFC merchandise, the FBI was already monitoring everything that was happening. But after Anonymous hacked our site, we also got U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security, involved. And it helps when they know when and where the hackers are going to attack. So I put my chin out there, and we knew they were gonna punch it. Two weeks after they attacked me, a lot of them started getting busted. I think we contributed to that.

I stood up to these guys and challenged them when nobody else would. I've got no problem telling anybody in the world that this is how it went down. Yeah, they leaked some info and dropped our website for a couple of days, but I'm not gonna back down to these Internet bullies. If there are people out there who believe that they can steal or make money off of your intellectual property, I don't care who they are. You go after them, guns a-blazin', man. Guns a-blazin'.