The 4chan website was hacked, and users of a competing resource claimed responsibility
The most famous anonymous image board 4chan has apparently been hacked. The site was completely inaccessible from the morning of 14 May to the afternoon of 15 May, and is currently loading, albeit with interruptions. The site allows you to post images anonymously, without registration or other identity verification. Because of this, anarchy has always flourished on the image board and it has become a platform where both the best memes and the most disgusting things were born.
Here's What We Know
On 14 April, 4chan.org went offline. None of its main boards - /b/, /pol/, /g/ - were loaded, and the official representatives of the resource were silent. Meanwhile, the 4channel forum (an alternative version with softer content) reported an alleged data leak and a serious "hit" on 4chan's servers, which were disconnected from the network to regain control.
Things got even more interesting when the Doomer forum, a relatively new community that bills itself as an "alternative to toxic 4chan", began posting screenshots of 4chan's administrative panel and moderators' internal correspondence, and threatening to release even more data. They claim to have access to internal logs, IP addresses, moderator information, user location data, and even the platform's source code. They also claim that 4chan's administrators and moderators include many government agents based in the District of Columbia with .gov government email accounts, but they do not provide screenshots to support this claim, so the credibility of these allegations remains questionable.
The Doomer users claim that the attack is a kind of "revenge for years of poisoning the internet", alluding to the toxic influence of /pol/ (the political branch of 4chan) and its culture. At the same time, they call for a "shift to more ethical communities".
At the time of publication, 4chan was partially back online, but without official comment, it remains unclear how deep the attack was and whether a data breach actually occurred.
Source: gizmodo.com
