The chief executive and founder of far-right social media platform Gab blamed \u201cmentally ill\u201d \u201cdemon hackers\u201d for a major breach that reportedly accessed about\u00a070,000 messages as well as user data.<\/p>\n
Gab CEO Andrew Torba also used a transphobic slur for those attacking the site.<\/p>\n
Torba tweeted Sunday that \u201cmy account and [Donald] Trump\u2019s have been compromised.\u201d He vowed that \u201cthe entire company is all hands investigating what happened and working to trace and patch the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transparency group\u00a0Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) announced that it had acquired more than 70 gigabytes of data from the platform\u00a0from an operation it labeled \u201cGabLeaks,\u201d Wired was the first to report Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A hacker or hackers known as \u201cJaXpArO (they\/them) and My Little Anonymous Revival Project\u201d launched the attack to expose the identities and posts of people using the site, according to DDoSecrets, which is a WikiLeaks-style website that provides a platform for leaked information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gab users are known to include large numbers of QAnon conspiracy theorists, promoters of the \u201cbig lie\u201d that Trump won the presidential election and rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Gab surged in popularity in January after competing right-wing social media platform Parler lost its spot on the internet when it was bumped off Amazon\u2019s web hosting service.<\/p>\n
The information will be made available to select researchers and journalists, according to DDoSecrets.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a \u201cgold mine of research for people looking at militias, neo-Nazis, the far right, QAnon, and everything surrounding January 6,\u201d\u00a0DDOSecrets co-founder Emma Best said in a text message interview with Wired, which examined some of the information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The material not only includes public posts and profiles but also posts from private-group and personal accounts,\u00a0according to Best.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data and private posts, everything someone needs to run a nearly complete analysis on Gab users and content,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After Wired first contacted Torba for a response Friday, he initially called it an \u201calleged data breach\u201d in a statement posted to the company website. He also accused \u201creporters\u201d (he didn\u2019t mention Wired) who asked him about the breach of\u00a0\u201cassisting\u201d the hacker, which Wired denied. DDoSecrets called the accusation \u201centirely false.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torba reassured users in his statement that Gab doesn\u2019t maintain significant amounts of personal information and that just about every social media site gets hacked from time to time.<\/p>\n