The notorious imageboard 4chan is currently inaccessible after hackers appear to have leaked internal data from the website.
In a post on Monday evening to the rival imageboard soyjack.party, an anonymous user claimed that a hacker was able to leak website code and the personal information of staff after being in 4chan’s system for over a year.
4chan hack
The user went on to claim that a 4chan admin, “in an attempt to control the damage,” took its servers offline. As of Tuesday morning, the imageboard was only available intermittently.
Screenshots shared in the Soyjack thread show what appears to be admin-level access to 4chan. In one example, an image shows an internal discussion in /j/, a private board for moderators and volunteer guideline enforcers known as janitors.
The image also shows the use of an internal tool that allows moderators to view the location, host, and IP address of the site’s otherwise anonymous users, as well as ban them.
The Daily Dot was able to obtain a sample of the purported data, which included a list containing the username and email address of one administrator as well as approximately 218 moderators, managers, and janitors.
The data also contains hundreds of pages of archived posts as well as what appears to be the imageboard’s backend code. it also includes the names of users who bought yearly subscriptions to the site, a program called Pass.
Founded in 2003, 4chan is heavily intertwined with popular internet culture and is responsible for launching everything from the world’s most popular memes to the Anonymous hacking collective.
The website has repeatedly stirred controversy for its involvement in scandals such as Gamergate, the nude celebrity photo leak of 2014 known as “The Fappening,” and the proliferation of racist memes.
At this time, 4chan has not released a statement on the reported hack.
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