Controversial Alt-Right Website 4Chan Looks Like it Got Hacked

You dream about certain special days that may or may never come. For some, I’m sure that’s their wedding day or the birth of their first child. For me, it was the dream that someday, somehow, someone would take down 4chan in a way that the site could never recover from. I didn’t know if that day would ever come, but somehow, it seems it has.

Controversial image posting site 4chan—which has been the center of a number of controversies over the years, ranging from leaked nude photos of celebrities without their consent to the alleged radicalization of alt-right youth that some say has led to mass shootings—is down and has supposedly been hacked, according to photos circulating online. Competing site Soyjack, which I’m not linking to because that site is problematic in its own ways, had images from the hack and claimed to have reports that the hacker had been in the system for over a year.

According to Wired, information believed to be leaked includes back-end code and admin and moderator email addresses. TechCrunch also reported that emails of 4chan Pass subscribers, who pay for access to VIP sections of the site, may have also been leaked.

While it’s true that 4chan is known for pranks, and it would not be uncharacteristic for this to be a prank, it seems like this is probably real. According to Wired, the first sign that something happened came when a previously banned section of the website suddenly resurfaced with a message saying “U GOT HACKED XD.” TechCrunch interviewed an anonymous “janitor” of the site (basically a low-level moderator with fewer privileges than actual admins and moderators) who, when asked if the screenshots are real, said, “I have no reason to believe otherwise.” According to Reuters, Alon Gal, co-founder of an Israeli cybercrime monitoring company Hudson Rock, believed the screenshots to be legitimate.

So, while it’s true that this could still be a prank of some sort, it looks increasingly like the real deal. Considering how much 4chan has been responsible for doxing and leaking intimate things from other people, the hack seems to be poetic justice. Sadly, it’s likely that the right-wing radicalism it fostered will find a new home on the internet, but for now,  one of the biggest sources of that radicalism has been taken down and is unlikely to ever rebuild. Even if the site got back up, what faith would its users have that they could continue to remain anonymous? So, for now, let’s celebrate. Ding-dong, the witch is dead!

Photo by Matt Furie on Instagram