4chan is partly back online after a hacking incident took the image-sharing site down for nearly two weeks. The site went dark on April 14, following a hack that led to the leak of data, including a list of moderators and “janitors.”
Following 4chan’s extended outage, journalist Ryan Broderick, writing for Wired, effectively wrote its obituary. He described how the site, once a center for internet culture and anonymous radicals, degenerated over time into a community celebrating mass shooters, the main hub of Gamergate, and the driving force behind global far-right fascism.
A post on the official 4chan blog detailed the circumstances surrounding the hack, stating that “a hacker using a UK IP address” gained access to one of 4chan’s servers by exploiting a “bogus PDF upload.” This access allowed the hacker to exfiltrate database tables and much of 4chan’s source code, subsequently vandalizing the site before being detected by moderators.
The 4chan team described the damage as “catastrophic,” attributing the breach to insufficient skilled man-hours available to update their code and infrastructure, as well as being “starved of money for years by advertisers, payment providers, and service providers who had succumbed to external pressure campaigns.” They noted that advertisers and payment providers willing to work with 4chan are rare and often pressured into canceling their services.
A complete guide to consumer data privacy
Following the hack, the breached server was replaced, although the site now has new limitations. PDF uploads are temporarily disabled, and a board for sharing Flash animations remains offline due to concerns over potential exploits using .swf files.
As of Sunday afternoon, 4chan’s status checker indicated that the boards and front page were operational, while posting, images, and thumbnails were not working. The 4chan team concluded their blog post by stating, “4chan is back. No other website can replace it, or this community. No matter how hard it is, we are not giving up.”
