A number of hackers identifying under the Anonymous collective claim to have stolen “a decade’s worth of data” from webhost Epik.
American domain registrar and web hosting service Epik is known for working with far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist content, and has a history of hosting platforms that others have dropped.
"Well, after years of bolstering the worst trash the Internet has to offer, this is, truly, the Epik moment we've all been waiting for," the hackers said in a 'press release' on 4Chan, first reported by Steven Monacelli.
The group claims to have all of Epik's domain purchase history, domain transfers, unredacted Whois information, DNS changes, email forwards, payment history (but not credit card data), account credentials (for Epik customers, hosting, and Anonymize VPN), and data from Epik internal systems and servers. It also said they would share "a dump of an employee's mailbox, just because we could."
The group said that the hack includes data that will take months to unpack:
"Time to find out who in your family secretly ran an Ivermectin horse p*rn fetish site, disinfo publishing outfit, or yet another QAnon hellhole.
"Want to know when a nation-state decided to offer hosting to some domestic terror groups, without those pesky DDoS mitigating reverse proxies getting in your way? Want to know the identity of the owner of a domain or large set of domains used in yet another influence/information operation? Decloak origin IPs of nazi websites for further investigation, poking, prodding!
"Map out a decade of online fash with a level of clarity nobody has been able to UNTIL NOW!"
The data is being widely shared online. Whistleblower site DDoSecrets is also sharing the data, and said it was working on a more accessible version of the data. It is not recommended to download unverified data released by hackers.
Epik has pitched itself as a protector of "lawful free speech," hosting platforms like Patriots.win (dropped by Reddit), Parler (dropped by AWS), 8chan (dropped by Cloudflare), BitChute, and Gab (dropped by GoDaddy).
It also hosted neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, when it acquired the site's host BitMitigate, but dropped the contract when it was reported on.
Epik's CEO Rob Monster has long been embroiled in controversy over his public opinions, including sharing a video on Gab of a Canadian white nationalist describing migrants as bringing "rape epidemics, sharia law, and the spectacle of terror." He also uploaded videos of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings to Twitter and Gab, but said the shooting was a hoax.
On a white nationalist podcast, Monster said of former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke that "he's actually a pretty clever guy, he's articulate. He knows history."
On Gab, he said: "Are there a lot of 'Jewish' people who are in a position of power or influence and favor other 'Jewish' people, Ashkenazi, or otherwise? Sure. Do I think God is impressed by that? No, I do not.... God will deal with them and in His time and His way regardless of hoaxes and conspiracies along the way."
A self-described Christian Libertarian, Monster said in a talk at the Mid Atlantic Reformation Society that "I was called, I believe, by the Lord to be a Registrar."
Monster and Epik have yet to comment on the purported hack.