Massive 4chan Hack Might Expose Longtime Admins and Users

Controversial image board 4chan has been hacked, and gigabytes of compressed data have been published online. The hackers claim to have had administrative access to the site's back end, potentially revealing the email addresses and IP addresses of some of its most prominent members, including site moderators and administrators.

4chan is a longstanding site with a dark and storied past. Positioned by its proponents as an example of free speech and anti-censorship, it's also been linked with heinous crimes and conspiracy theory proliferation. The hack appeared to take place earlier this week when the image board went down and was inaccessible to users. Following that, messages started appearing on rival board Soyjak.party with screenshots of the administrative backend of 4chan, along with email addresses, photos, and other personal information of claimed site admins and moderators.

The 4chan site has received heavy criticism over the years for its ...