Two weeks ago, 4chan was the victim of a cyberattack. The forum, often considered the worst on the web, rife with racist, homophobic, and misogynistic messages, suffered an attack claimed by Soyjak. Party, a cybercriminal gang. Furthermore, the forum, which appeared over 20 years ago, was taken offline in the wake of the cyberattack. More than 20 million visitors were deprived of their favorite platform.
At the end of the cyberattack, the hackers stole a wealth of data on the site's moderators and administrators. The data, which includes images of 4chan's internal tools, was shared across several competing forums.
What happened during the 4chan cyberattack?
On April 26, 2025, 4chan made a comeback. In a blog post, administrators stated that the forum is "still standing" and is back online. As the site's team explains, 4chan was attacked by "a hacker using a UK IP address." The hacker used "outdated software on one of 4chan's servers" to launch the attack via a fake PDF file sent to the forum's upload system.
Once that was done, the hacker first looted all the data contained on one of the site's servers. In particular, he exfiltrated "4chan's database tables and a large portion of its source code." This is potentially sensitive information, retrieved from the 4chan administrators' dashboard. After siphoning off the site's data, the hackers "began vandalizing 4chan." Therefore, the administrators shut down the servers to limit the damage.
"Catastrophic" damage
The team realized that the damage perpetrated by the hackers was "catastrophic.". The administrators initially attributed the extent of the damage to a lack of site updates. Indeed, the old operating systems and code were not updated in time.
According to the press release, 4chan suffers from a serious lack of skilled labor to carry out the necessary updates. These shortcomings contributed to the appearance of a vulnerability in one of the software programs used by the site. Hackers were quick to discover the breach and exploit it.
Financial setbacks at the origin of the breach
The company, owned by Japanese Hiroyuki Nishimura, could have avoided the appearance of a security breach in its infrastructure, but its financial woes decided otherwise. Purchasing new servers was a real obstacle course, because "few companies were willing to sell us servers". A server migration, carried out last year, was not fully completed. Old servers, purchased second-hand, are still used for certain functions.
In short, the forum has been a victim of its dismal reputation. To cope with the additional workload caused by the hack, the site has called on volunteer developers. Despite the cyberattack, 4chan is well and truly back... much to the chagrin of its many detractors.
The internet's trash reborn
4chan is regularly accused of hosting hateful, racist, sexist, and violent content with impunity. For researcher Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University and specialist in digital ethics, "platforms like 4chan, which do not have anti-racism policies, have no consequences for those who share hate online." This is why 4chan is often considered the trash can of the internet.
Source: 4chan
0 Comments