Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who's behind Proud Boys and other far-right websites
Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol - allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.
But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data - including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik's customers.
Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it.
"It's massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I've seen and, as an extremism researcher, it's certainly the most interesting," said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. "It's an embarrassment of riches - stress on the embarrassment."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/huge-hack-reveals-embarrassing-details-185327291.html
A major far-right platform got hit by a data breach, revealing the names and addresses of Proud Boys, QAnon, and Texas Right to Life backers
Hackers last week breached a major web platform that helped far-right groups like the Proud Boys and QAnon operate online.
About 15 million names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses held by the platform, Epik, were revealed.
The hacking group Anonymous claimed credit for the breach.
In an email to customers on Monday, shared on Twitter by the data scientist Emily Gorcenski, Epik said it had confirmed an "unauthorized intrusion" on or around September 13.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-far-platform-got-hit-100851278.html
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