After more than two decades, an infamous website may have suffered an attack from which it may never recover.

A week ago, a major hack forced 4chan to shut down, and the forum remains inaccessible. Founded in 2003, the site has become a trailblazer for a certain segment of online subculture, as it is sophisticated, unmoderated, and almost completely anonymous.

A 2018 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center cited its participation in the rampantly racist and misogynistic online trolling culture of 4chan and its offshoots as a major influence in the rise of the alt-right. In 2021, Minecraft removed a decades-old reference to 4chan’s /v/ forum, where creator Markus Notch Persson heavily promoted the game in its early days. The site was ultimately taken down not because of controversy or dislike from the right-thinking denizens of the online world, but because of competition from another forum, Soyjack.party. According to a message on the forum celebrating the attack, the alleged hacker had been on 4chan for more than a year before launching the hack.

Although 4chan was built on anonymity, users could register accounts to take advantage of certain features. Many did, and all were reportedly doxxed. According to an article published by TechCrunch shortly after the attack, the hacker posted screenshots purporting to show 4chan’s backend, source code, and templates for banning users, not to mention a list of 4chan moderators and “janitors”. The latter are users who can delete posts and threads, but do not have full moderator access. One of the janitors told TechCrunch that they believe the information released is all true, and that hacking is clearly a bigger problem than ever before…

Some users are registered with government or higher education (.gov, .edu) domains and are associated with right-wing, sometimes violent political content and movements. According to BoingBoing, everyone has been doxxed, the site’s servers have been decimated, and the admin team is falling apart, so it has no confidence in the site’s return. However, if the security holes are patched, this could happen, and a 4chan moderator has already stated that they are working on restoring the site, but on 4chan’s IRC channel, quite a few users have all but resigned themselves to the site being down.

Something is bound to happen then…

Source: PCGamer, TechCrunch, BoingBoing