The hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have obtained gigabytes of data from Epik, which provides domain name, hosting and DNS services for a variety of clients. These include the Texas Republican Party, Gab, Parler, and 8chan, among other right-wing sites. The stolen data has been released as a torrent. The hacktivist collective says the dataset, which is over 180GB in size, contains "a decade of company data."
Anonymous says the dataset is "all that is needed to trace the actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet that has eluded researchers, activists and, well, almost everyone." If this information is correct, Epik's customer data and identities could now fall into the hands of activists, researchers, and just about anyone curious enough to take a look.
Decades of Epik stuff, now in a stream near you
Epik is a domain registrar and web service provider known for serving right-wing clients, some of whom have been shunned by more mainstream IT providers due to objectionable and sometimes illicit content hosted by clients.
Anonymous' activities began with what the group calls "Operation Jane" after the Texas Heartbeat Law became law this month. The restrictive abortion law allows individuals, not necessarily government agencies or the police, to enforce the six-week abortion ban. Under the law, any Texas resident can bring a civil lawsuit against anyone who performs or helps facilitate an illegal abortion, and claim at least $ 10,000 in damages.
The note, shown below, was stained by journalist Steven Monacelli, who has since been doxxed by an Epik supporter.
Among the dataset are several SQL databases that contain what appear to be customer records associated with each domain name hosted by Epik. Ars analyzed a small subset of the leaked dataset, including what one source calls an Epik employee's mailbox, which contains correspondence from Epik's CEO. Rob monster.
Members of another hacktivist group, Distributed Denial of Secrets, have also created the dataset available via alternative means for those who cannot torrent.
"We are not aware of any infringement. We take the security of our customers' data very seriously and are investigating the allegation," an Epik representative told Ars.
Hackers alter Epik's knowledge base to poke fun at the company's response
Anonymous also manipulated Epik's knowledge base to poke fun at the company's denial of the breach.
"On September 13, 2021, a group of children calling themselves 'Anonymous', whom we have never heard of, said they administered[d] to get, well, honestly, all of our data, and then publish it, "said the altered knowledge base, as seen in a archived copy. "They claim it included all user data. Everything. All usernames, passwords, emails, support inquiries, violating all anonymization services[s] have. Of course that is not true. We are not stupid enough to allow that to happen. "
The knowledge base page ends by sarcastically saying, "We wrote this ourselves, obviously not part of the hacked account." Epik has since removed the page.
Prior to this incident, Anonymous defaced the Republican Texas website by replacing references to "Help Texas Stay Red" with "Texas: Taking the voice of women to promote theocratic erosion of church and state barriers" . The group also added "donation" links to the nonprofit reproductive health care organization Planned Parenthood.
