Aw shucks, would you look at that: Gab, one of the premier online bigot cesspools “free-speech alternatives” to Twitter, got itself hacked the other day, potentially exposing around 70 gigabytes of private messages, posts, and passwords. The site’s founder (and noted transphobe), Andrew Torba, also confirmed Donald Trump’s account was one of the estimated 15,000 users included in the “GabLeaks” info dump. A hacktivist going by “JaXpArO and My Little Anonymous Revival Project” took responsibility for the data heist, which Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) then disseminated via a limited distribution release to select journalists and data scientists specializing in leaked information.
First launched in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Gab quickly became a go-to alternative social media platform for MAGA cultists, white supremacists, dog whistle enthusiasts, and other various edgelord hangers-on. In the aftermath of the October 27, 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue pogrom, it soon became clear the perpetrator was an avid Gab user whose profile stated “jews are the children of satan [sic].” The murderer also posted messages including coded Neo-Nazi language like “1488” leading up to the attack, evidence of which caused a number of businesses including Stripe, Medium, PayPal, and GoDaddy to disassociate completely from the social network.
Gab later secured the support of Epik, Inc., which also backs similar shit cauldrons like Parler. Interested parties can request access to the DDoSecrets’ hacked data over here. Everyone else is free to point at Gab and give them your best Nelson Muntz laugh.
Correction: The original version of this post attributed the Gab hack solely to DDoSecrets. The hacktivist, “JaXpArO and My Little Anonymous,” claimed responsibility, with DDoSecrets then providing the information given to them to select journalists and data researchers.
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[via ArsTechnica]