The hacker collective Anonymous has released a new data trove obtained from Epik, the domain hosting website that has come to be associated with far-right groups and causes.
According to journalist Steven Monacelli, the latest data, released on Monday, includes a backup of the Texas Republican Party’s server as well as “sensitive documents, a database, and more.”
Anonymous wrote in a news release accompanying the data posted by Monacelli on Twitter that “it seems the Texas GOP lost their backups, Anonymous is generously including one, complete with all of their private documents, database, draft articles that didn’t make the narrative cut, dark memes(?) and only Raptor Jesus knows what else.”
SCOOP: hacktivists leak data from the Texas GOP as part of Operation Epik Fail. It appears to be a backup of the Texas GOP server and includes sensitive documents, a database, and more. pic.twitter.com/caehYQsJas
— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) October 4, 2021
“It’s time to reclaim this series of tubes from Nazi scum. It’s clear that the feds aren’t going to do it. Save the children from Q,” the release states, an apparent reference to the QAnon conspiracy group.
Anonymous defaced the Texas GOP website on September 11 in retaliation for the state’s contentious abortion ban.
The Anonymous news release encourages people to “keep messing” with “anti-choice states,” adding that, “Abortion is a human right”
The data release on Monday is part three of what Anonymous has dubbed “Operation EPIK FAIL,” and has been described as “a Rosetta Stone” to the far-right by extremism researchers.
“The leaks have continued to cause widespread fallout for Epik’s customers, which includes websites such as Parler, Gab, 8chan, and TheDonald,” according to the Daily Dot. “It remains unclear what fallout will result from the third release as journalists and researchers struggle to sift through the enormous amounts of information already present in the previous two leaks.”
The hack of Epik’s internal information has shone a light on a long-forgotten area of the Internet’s underbelly, and researchers estimate it will take months to analyze the whole cache — the equivalent of tens of millions of pages. Many people are looking for information on who owns and manages extremist domains, which was previously unknown.
In a data-breach report filed with Maine’s attorney general this week, Epik, located outside Seattle, stated that 110,000 people had been affected nationally by having their financial account and credit card information, passwords, and security codes exposed.
An previous data-breach notice from the firm, filed to comply with Montana law, was signed by the “Epic Security Team,” with the company’s name misspelled. According to an Epik representative, it was a simple mistake.
Heidi Beirich, a hate and extremism researcher, said she is used to spending weeks or months performing “the detective work” to figure out who is behind a single extremist domain. She described the Epik data collection as “is like somebody has just handed you all the detective work — the names, the people behind the accounts.”
“This is like the mother of all data lodes because Epik was at the center of so many of the extremist websites and organizations that people like me study. Epik was the place of last refuge for a lot of these sites,” said Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “And as the data is analyzed and looked at more deeply, we’re going to see this ecosystem in a way that was simply not possible before.”
Beirich stated that the names of administrators and web developers, as well as “the money flow” — how the sites stay afloat — are the types of information that have long perplexed even the most seasoned hate trackers. She noted that the Epik hack might assist connect the dots.
Robert Monster, the creator of Epik, who did not reply to requests for comment, claimed the company’s data had been stolen and warned users not to use it with “negative intent.”
In emailed remarks to The Post this week, an Epik spokesman stated that the firm has processed hundreds of thousands of names over the years, and some are sure to be objectionable. The firm refuses to assign the comment to a specific representative.
According to an Epik representative, the attack was “an egregious violation against our users,” and the compromised data contained up to 38,000 credit card information.
According to the spokesman, the firm “offers its services to everyone” and “domains affiliated with right-wing politics comprise less than 1 percent of users.” Epik stated that it is unaware of the intentions of its users and “does not consider its role to be censors of free citizens.”
Though domain registrars like Epik encourage consumers to provide accurate information when purchasing a new website address, it is quite simple to register a domain in someone else’s name, and many registrars do not need independent evidence or confirmation of identification.
Buyers seeking privacy frequently request that their registrar conceal their information, even in the instance of Epik, using an add-on service called Anonymize.
Some basic information about the owner of a website domain is publicly available in what is known as a “WHOIS” database. However, the Epik data hack revealed considerably more than that.
The Post analyzed materials from the attack that included not just names and addresses, but also complete credit card numbers, unencrypted passwords, and other extremely sensitive data. Many website owners who trusted Epik to keep their identities concealed were exposed, while those who took further measures, such as paying in bitcoin and using fictitious names, were able to stay anonymous.
