Massive 4chan Hack Might Expose Longtime Admins and Users

Controversial image board 4chan has been hacked, and gigabytes of compressed data have been published online. The hackers claim to have had administrative access to the site’s back end, potentially revealing the email addresses and IP addresses of some of its most prominent members, including site moderators and administrators.
4chan is a longstanding site with a dark and storied past. Positioned by its proponents as an example of free speech and anti-censorship, it’s also been linked with heinous crimes and conspiracy theory proliferation. The hack appeared to take place earlier this week when the image board went down and was inaccessible to users. Following that, messages started appearing on rival board Soyjak.party with screenshots of the administrative backend of 4chan, along with email addresses, photos, and other personal information of claimed site admins and moderators.
The 4chan site has received heavy criticism over the years for its tolerance of extreme practices like racism and misogyny, and it has an unofficial reputation for responding slowly or poorly to postings of extreme and illegal pornography. The anonymity of the site is one of the reasons its users were willing to make such posts. If revealed as part of the hack, the leaking of identifying information could be extremely damaging to those caught out, as per Wired.
The 4chan leak has the potential to be damning for anyone linked to posting on the site, even if they aren’t caught making such posts themselves. The future of 4chan is also in doubt, as the source code was reportedly leaked as part of the hack, making future attempts to secure the site all but impossible, as Engadget reports.
If you are interested in investigating the leak yourself, or looking at the raw data, just be very wary of what you download. ExtremeTech cannot vouch for the safety of anything claiming to be part of this leak.
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