After getting hacked and its moderators’ personal data leaked, the Japanese image-sharing platform is back on track, reinforcing its sturdiness
“4chan is back. No other website can replace it or this community. No matter how hard it is, we are not giving up.”
The anonymous user base platform initially went down on April 14. Later on, the website became active with a disclaimer, “U GOT HACKED,” displayed across the top. Soon, the screenshots of moderators’ and janitors' personal information went viral. One of the janitors also confirmed to TechCrunch that the leaked data is real.
4chan Community Response
As soon as the news of 4chan getting hacked went viral, 4chan supporters and haters grabbed their keyboards. One of the seasonal users of 4Chan, Ryan Broderick, wrote on Wired
‘‘4chan Is Dead. Its toxic legacy is everywhere. It’s likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy.’’
In response to this write-up, an anonymous fan of 4Chan, XER0DYNAMITE, wrote
"Toxic legacy"? People, have you looked at our world with a critical eye? Have you paid attention to your cities? Our world is toxic. Don't blame 4chan or relatively innocent 4chan users/content makers.”
4chan Team Brought the Platform Back
As soon as the image-sharing platform came back on its feet, the team responded by writing a post on the website stating the protocols it followed to recover the platform. The team stated
‘A hacker using a UK IP address exploited an out-of-date software package on one of 4chan’s servers via a bogus PDF upload. With this entry point, they were eventually able to gain access to one of 4chan’s servers, including database access and access to our own administrative dashboard.’
The team further explained that the development team surveyed the damage done by hackers, which was catastrophic. However, the server that was breached was detected and replaced with the operating system, and the code was updated to the latest version.
