4chan, a popular online imageboard known for its edgy and often controversial content, has been allegedly hacked by a rival forum. The news sent shockwaves through the internet community, with thousands of 4chan users reporting outages Monday night amid rumors on social media that the site had been ransacked.
The alleged breach is believed to have occurred around 1900 EST on April 14, with over 1,000 user complaints reported via Downdetector. The site's last post before going down was a Jack Black "Chicken Jockey" meme from the Minecraft movie, adding to the surreal nature of the situation.
The claim that 4chan had been hacked comes from Kevin Beaumont, director of emerging threats at Arcadia Group, who posted on BlueSky saying he suspected the site had been compromised. According to Beaumont, the breach included a "pretty comprehensive" compromise, including SQL databases and shell access.
Reports suggest that 4chan was operating on an outdated version of PHP, a popular open-source scripting language used for web development. This is believed to have made the site vulnerable to attack, with a deprecated function being used to interact with its MySQL database.
A rival forum, known as soyjack party or sharty, has claimed responsibility for the breach and posted what they allegedly stole from 4chan online. The leak reportedly includes sensitive information such as source code, email addresses, and even IP addresses of lower-level moderators known as janitors.
"Their board on 4chan /qa/ was banned 4 years ago and so they've been biding their time, I guess," said Xeeted journalist Alex Goldman. "As part of the hack they reinstated their banned board. Lol."
The hack has raised serious concerns about the potential for personal risk to 4chan moderators who have had their information doxxed – meaning their real-world identities have been publicly exposed.
4chan's management did not immediately respond to The Register's questions about the alleged breach, leaving users to wonder what will happen next. As this story continues to unfold, we will provide updates on any new developments.
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