Anonymous Claims to Have Stolen Huge Trove of Data From Epik, the Right-Wing’s Favorite Web Host

Members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous declare to have hacked internet registration firm Epik, allegedly stealing “a decade’s worth of data,” together with reams of details about its shoppers and their domains.

Epik is controversial, having been recognized to host a wide range of rightwing shoppers, together with ones that earlier website hosting suppliers, like GoDaddy, have dropped for numerous causes. Its customers have included conservative social media networks Parler and Gab, in addition to conspiracy-theory-laden YouTube wannabe Bitchute and former President Trump fansite, The Donald. The firm not too long ago hosted prolifewhistleblower.com—the web site designed to assist individuals snitch on Texas residents who need abortions—however later forcibly eliminated the tip-collecting platform after figuring out that it had violated Epik’s phrases by nonconsensually accumulating third-party data.

Now, nonetheless, the obvious hacking of its platform signifies that all of Epik’s shoppers might quickly have their backend data provided as much as public scrutiny.

News of the obvious incident was first reported by Steven Monacelli, an impartial journalist from Texas, who tweeted Monday {that a} “large dataset” belonging to the corporate appeared to have been stolen. Monacelli’s data comes from a 4Chan “press release” put out by the alleged hackers. In the discharge, the group claims to have stolen area purchases and transfers, account credentials for “all Epik customers,” in addition to a knowledge dump from an Epik worker’s e-mail inbox, amongst many different objects.

“This dataset is all that’s needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet that has eluded researchers, activists, and, well, just about everybody,” the discharge claims.

When reached for remark, Epik advised Gizmodo that they weren’t conscious of a hacking incident. “We are not aware of any breach. We take the security of our clients’ data extremely seriously, and we are investigating the allegation,” mentioned a spokesperson, in an e-mail.

Whether Epik is conscious of the breach or not, their alleged knowledge is now within the arms of on-line activists who plan to publish it on the internet. The hacktivist group Distributed Denial of Secrets mentioned Tuesday {that a} supply had supplied them with the leak and that they plan to curate it for public consumption on their web site. DDoS, which has made a behavior of releasing knowledge from most of the shoppers of Epik, affirmed that the info haul consists of intensive registration details about customers of the corporate. The DDoS site claims the dump consists of “180 gigabytes of user, registration, forwarding and other information behind the ‘privacy’ web hosting and registrar service Epik, known for hosting fascist, white supremacist and other right-wing content as well as harassment and doxing websites.”

Links to the info dump are extensively out there on-line however Gizmodo doesn’t advocate the typical consumer going round downloading unvetted hacked supplies.

In the previous, Epik has acted as a refuge to right-wing teams which were kicked off of different internet hosting platforms. Case in level, it took in Parler and Gab, the MAGA-styled Twitter clones that had hassle discovering a house after a lot of the organizing across the January seventh assault on the Capitol constructing was discovered to have originated on their nearly unmoderated platforms. However, the corporate not too long ago made it recognized that it does draw the road someplace when it reduce ties with the abortion snitch website.

DDoS has beforehand hosted knowledge that was stolen in confirmed hacking and/or scraping incidents, together with ones involving Gab, Parler, and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C. The group was punished by Twitter final 12 months after the secrets-publisher shared a hyperlink to greater than 200 gigabytes’ price of stolen police knowledge, together with hundreds of confidential emails, FBI bulletins and memos dated way back to 1996. Twitter suspended the DDoS citing violations of its “hacked materials policy,” which might bear a radical rewrite only some months later.

Gizmodo has downloaded copies of the Epik knowledge and shall be assessing its content material.

Additional reporting by Dell Cameron.