Extremist Epik Clients Fear Unmasking via 180GB Leak
The fallout from the hack of Epik earlier this month continues to attract the wrong sort of attention. Researchers continue to allege criminality among those who thought Epik was shielding their identities.
Domain registrar and hosting provider to Parler, Gab and 8chan—Epik is something of a pariah. But researchers are quickly unpicking the anonymous web of data to identify the alleged child pornographers, racists, neo-Nazis and other hate-mongers who made up at least a proportion of the firm’s esteemed clientèle.
Rob Monster (pictured) advises people to “delete any data that does not belong to you.” In today’s SB Blogwatch, we question the advice of someone with such weak data security.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: Impossible Mario.
Nice shirt, Rob
What’s the craic? WaPo’s Drew Harwell, Hannah Allam, Jeremy B. Merrill and Craig Timberg report—“Fallout begins for far-right trolls who trusted Epik to keep their identities secret”:
Highly sensitive data”
In the real world, Joshua Alayon worked as a real estate agent. … But online, data revealed by the massive hack of Epik … signaled a darker side: Alayon’s name and personal details were found on invoices suggesting he had once paid for websites with names such as RacismInc.com, WhitesEncyclopedia.com, ChristiansAgainstIsrael.com and TheHolocaustIsFake.com.
…
After Alayon’s name appeared in the breached data, his brokerage … dropped him as an agent. … Alayon told The Post that he does not own the “racisminc,” Holocaust-denial or other Web addresses but declined to say if he had owned them in the past. [He said] The Post was “fake news.”
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Epik provides Web services to many prominent right-wing fixtures online, including the media group One America News, the video site Bitchute, the social media site Gab and the message board Patriots.win. Other domains show links to targeted harassment campaigns of journalists or activists.
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Materials from the hack … include not just names and home addresses but also full credit card numbers, unencrypted passwords and other highly sensitive data. … Epik’s founder, Robert Monster … said the company’s data was hijacked and urged people not to use it with “negative intent.”
Good luck with that, Mister Monster. No so long ago, Jessica Schulberg described him as the “CEO Who’s Proud Of Keeping Neo-Nazis Online”:
New business”
Monster’s ideology and rhetoric can at times be almost indistinguishable from those of the neo-Nazis he’s defended. … Monster founded Epik in 2009 and described it as “the Swiss Bank of Domains,” a neutral company that would take money from anybody — even Nazis.
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Monster appears at ease with the anti-Semitic slurs and racist fearmongering that are rampant on [Gab]. He approvingly shared a video by … a Canadian white nationalist that characterized migrants as the bearers of “rape epidemics, sharia law, and the spectacle of terror.”
…
It’s impossible to know how much of Monster’s behavior is sincere. His Gab theatrics have certainly won him some new business.
Aye, there’s the rub. Amirite? Bob Cronin adds—“Hack Uncovers Names Behind Far-Right Sites”:
Hate and Extremism”
Epik has served QAnon theorists, Proud Boys, and other groups that supported the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. … People aligned with extremist websites have started to feel the repercussions since a major hack revealed their identities.
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[But] for those who work against extremism and hate groups, the data dump is a boon. … Heidi Beirich … a researcher with the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism [said] “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.”
Such as? AmiMoJo shifts the paradigm:
Might help”
Many of them have already committed crimes, so the data will be used to investigate prior activities. It’s also very useful for identifying links between groups that claim to be unrelated. That kind of “terror cell” isolation [lets them] disavow each other’s behaviour and switch between identities as they get banned from mainstream platforms.
It’s also quite useful for identifying all the false flag ops and attempts to incite violence. Might help exonerate some people.
Interesting point. And Biceps is excited:
This will be exciting”
Schadenfreude. … I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a bit of sunlight.
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As always when dealing with large groups of nasty people, I expect we will learn of a lot of appalling and probably illegal behavior that we already assumed going on, but now it appears there will be documented evidence and identifying info. This will be exciting to watch develop.
Wait. Pause. Isn’t it pretty hypocritical of “Anonymous” to undo people’s anonymity? Slim to None thinks not:
You deserve what you get”
If a hacker is going after a common citizen for the purpose of exposing their “private antics” recorded on their device’s camera or to siphon off financial resources and identity, etc. … then lock them up and throw away the key. … But if you are a body (governmental or corporate or Internet Registrar) who regularly takes advantage of secrecy in order to cause harm to society as a whole, then you get no pity from me when your dirty laundry is draped over a fence for all to see.
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The founder of Epik … allows the registration of far-right neo-Nazi content that other registrars refuse. He capitalized on a niche that he could identify with. The trouble is that … Rob Monster had no clue what he was doing and his clientele just assumed he did.
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If you want to go to the trouble of putting something like that up on the Internet, do a better job of securing yourself and your client base. Otherwise, you deserve what you get.
And neither does Smidge204:
The backlash they absolutely deserve”
This is roughly equivalent to how there’s little sympathy for when a criminal gets hurt in the course of their crime. These are not innocent people; these are, by and large, some of the worst elements of modern society—racists, bigots, actual pedophiles, even literal Nazis.
…
They are corrosive to the social fabric and toxic to society’s members. The hack and data breach exposed them, and now they’re getting the backlash they absolutely deserve for the bull**** they’ve been doing from behind the veil of anonymity.
How big a deal is this, really? @markseibel does the math:
18,000 sites”
Epik says only 1% of it’s registered sites are right-wing political in nature. The records show Epik has 1.8 million sites. So that’s 18,000 sites.
ELI5? Sen. Kathleen Riebe—@Mskriebe—draws the moral of the story, which she explains like I’m five:
The internet never forgets. And if you can’t put your name on it, you shouldn’t be saying it.
Meanwhile, X Coder is a Marxist: [You’re fired—Ed.]
This is a perfect example of the Groucho Marx club dictum:
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
And Finally:
“Mario Kaizo haha oh wow oh no”
You have been reading SB Blogwatch by Richi Jennings. Richi curates the best bloggy bits, finest forums, and weirdest websites … so you don’t have to. Hate mail may be directed to @RiCHi or [email protected]. Ask your doctor before reading. Your mileage may vary. E&OE. 30.
Image sauce: @RobMonster (via Twitter)
