Anonymous hacks Epik, web host of far-right sites

[redheadbaker]

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/21/epik-far-right-hack-anonymous/

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.

[Michelle]

“The company played such a major role in keeping far-right terrorist cesspools alive,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. “Without Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread harm, whether that be building toward the Jan. 6 Capitol riots or sowing the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy.”

And the founder is named Robert Monster. Sounds about right.

[picksthemusic]

I'm embarrassed to say that I used to live in the city where Epik is/was located.

This whole story is just so crazy.

[raangoli]

I read this the other night. They made really simple (IMO) errors that could have been avoided.

But karma. So I will laugh at them a la Nelson from The Simpsons.