The Nineth Circle.

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<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/huge-hack-reveals-embarrassing-details
-of-who-s-behind-proud-boys-and-other-far-right-websites/ar-AAOFRQk?ocid=
msedgdhp&pc=U531>

<https://tinyurl.com/kvpyfkbm>

Huge hack reveals embarrassing details of who’s behind Proud Boys and
other far-right websites. Drew Harwell, Craig Timberg, Hannah Allam, 13
hrs ago.

Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right,
providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other
instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to
broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity.

But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the
hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes
of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other
identifying information of Epik’s customers.

Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a
Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been
doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have
spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last
week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material
say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it.

“It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as
an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said
Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who
studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress
on the embarrassment.”

Epik, based in the Seattle suburb of Sammamish, has made its name in the
Internet world by providing critical Web services to sites that have run
afoul of other companies’ policies against hate speech, misinformation
and advocating violence. Its client list is a roll-call of sites known
for permitting extreme posts and that have been rejected by other
companies for their failure to moderate what their users post.

Online records show those sites have included 8chan, which was dropped
by its providers after hosting the manifesto of a gunman who killed 51
Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; Gab, which was dropped
for hosting the antisemitic rants of a gunman who killed 11 people in a
Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; and Parler, which was dropped due to lax
moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

TheDonald’s owner speaks out on why he finally pulled plug on
hate-filled site Epik also provides services to a network of sites
devoted to extremist QAnon conspiracy theories. Epik briefly hosted the
neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer in 2019 after acquiring a cybersecurity
company that had provided it with hosting services, but Epik soon
canceled that contract, according to news reports. Epik also stopped
supporting 8chan after a short period of time, the company has said.

Earlier this month, Epik also briefly provided service to the
antiabortion group Texas Right to Life, whose website,
ProLifeWhistleblower.com, was removed by the hosting service GoDaddy
because it solicited accusations about which medical providers might be
violating a state abortion ban.

An Epik attorney said the company stopped working with the site because
it violated company rules against collecting people’s private
information. Online records show Epik was still the site’s domain
registrar as of last week, though the digital tip line is no longer
available, and the site now redirects to the group’s homepage.

Epik founder Robert Monster’s willingness to provide technical support
to online sanctuaries of the far-right have made him a regular target of
anti-extremism advocates, who criticized him for using Epik’s tools to
republish the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto and live-streamed video
the killer had made of the slaughter.

Monster also used the moment as a marketing opportunity, saying the
files were now “effectively uncensorable,” according to screenshots of
his tweets and Gab posts from the time. Monster also urged Epik
employees to watch the video, which he said would convince them it was
faked, Bloomberg News reported.

Monster has defended his work as critical to keeping the Internet
uncensored and free, aligning himself with conservative critics who
argue that leading technology companies such as Facebook, Twitter,
Amazon and YouTube have gone too far in policing content they deem
inappropriate.

Biden’s domestic terrorism strategy details unprecedented focus on
homegrown threats Monster did not respond to requests for comment from
The Washington Post. But he said in an email to customers two days after
hackers announced the breach that the company had suffered an “alleged
security incident” and asked customers to report back any “unusual
account activity.”

“You are in our prayers today,” Monster wrote last week, as news of the
hack spread. “When situations arise where individuals might not have
honorable intentions, I pray for them. I believe that what the enemy
intends for evil, God invariably transforms into good. Blessings to you
all.”

Since the hack, Epik’s security protocols have been the target of
ridicule among researchers, who’ve marveled at the site’s apparent
failure to take basic security precautions, such as routine encryption
that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public.

The files include years of website purchase records, internal company
emails and customer account credentials revealing who administers some
of the biggest far-right websites. The data includes client names, home
addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and passwords left in plain,
readable text. The hack even exposed the personal records from
Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to
conceal their identity.

8chan vowed to fight on, saying its ‘heartbeat is strong.’ Then a tech
firm knocked it offline. Similar failings by other hacked companies have
drawn scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which has probed
companies such as dating site Ashley Madison for failing to protect
their customers’ private data from hackers. FTC investigations have
resulted in settlements imposing financial penalties and more rigorous
privacy standards.

“Given Epik’s boasts about security, and the scope of its Web hosting, I
would think it would be an FTC target, especially if the company was
warned but failed to take protective action,” said David Vladeck, a
former head of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, now at Georgetown
University Law Center. “I would add that the FTC wouldn’t care about the
content — right wing or left wing; the questions would be the possible
magnitude and impact of the breach and the representations … the company
may have made about security.”

The FTC declined to comment.

Researchers poring through the trove say the most crucial findings
concern the identities of people hosting various extremist sites and the
key role Epik played in keeping material online that might otherwise
have vanished from the Internet — or at least the parts of the Internet
that are easily stumbled upon by ordinary users.

Ashley Madison owner agrees to pay $1.6 million to settle U.S.
investigations “The company played such a major role in keeping
far-right terrorist cesspools alive,” said Rita Katz, executive director
of SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. “Without
Epik, many extremist communities — from QAnon and white nationalists to
accelerationist neo-Nazis — would have had far less oxygen to spread
harm, whether that be building toward the Jan. 6 Capitol riots or sowing
the misinformation and conspiracy theories chipping away at democracy.”

The breach, first reported by the freelance journalist Steven Monacelli,
was made publicly available for download last week alongside a note from
Anonymous hackers saying it would help researchers trace the ownership
and management of “the worst trash the Internet has to offer.”

After the hackers’ announcement, Epik initially said it was “not aware
of any breach.” But in a rambling, three-hour live-stream last week,
Monster acknowledged there had been a “hijack of data that should not
have been hijacked” and called on people not to use the data for
“negative” purposes.

“If you have a negative intent to use that data, it’s not going to work
out for you. I’m just telling you,” he said. “If the demon tells you to
do it, the demon is not your friend.”

Several domains in the leak are associated with the far-right Proud Boys
group, which is known for violent street brawls and involvement in the
Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was banned by Facebook in 2018 as a
hate group.

Trump’s ‘stand by’ remark puts the Proud Boys in the spotlight
A Twitter account, @epikfailsnippet, that is posting unverified
revelations from the leaked data, included a thread purporting to expose
administrators of the Proud Boys sites. One man who was identified by
name as administrator of a local Proud Boys forum was said to be an
employee of Drexel University. The university said he hasn’t worked at
Drexel since November 2020.

Technology news site the Daily Dot reported that Ali Alexander, a
conservative political activist who played a key role in spreading false
voter fraud claims about the 2020 presidential election, took steps
after the Jan. 6 siege to obscure his ownership of more than 100 domains
registered to Epik. Nearly half reportedly used variations of the “Stop
the Steal” slogan pushed by Alexander and others. Alexander did not
reply to requests for comment from the Daily Dot or, on Tuesday, from
The Post.

Extremism researchers urge careful fact-checking to protect credibility,
but the data remains tantalizing for its potential to unmask extremists
in public-facing jobs.

Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit
whistleblower group, said some researchers call the Epik hack “the
Panama Papers of hate groups,” a comparison to the leak of more than 11
million documents that exposed a rogue offshore finance industry. And,
like the Panama Papers, scouring the files is labor intensive, with
payoffs that could be months away.

“A lot of research begins with naming names,” Best said. “There’s a lot
of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they’re
in for the long haul with some of this data.”