Mar 02, 2021 12:00:00

70GB of data including Mr. Trump's account leaked after a cyber attack on the popular SNS 'Gab' on the far right

SNS / Gab, which states that it 'supports freedom of speech and individual freedom,' is gaining popularity from people with extreme political ideas such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and alt-rights who have been banished from mainstream SNS. In February 2021, an anonymous hacker launched a cyberattack on Gab to steal 70GB of data, including Donald Trump's account information, and distribute it to journalists at the leak site Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDo Secrets). Was reported.

Release: GabLeaks (70GB) --Distributed Email of Secrets
https://ddosecrets.substack.com/p/release-gableaks-70gb

Far-Right Platform Gab Has Been Hacked—Including Private Data | WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/gab-hack-data-breach-ddosecrets/

Donald Trump is one of 15,000 Gab users whose account just got hacked | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/03/gab-the-far-right-website-has-been-hacked-and-70gb-of-data-leaked/

In January 2021, Trump's supporters

occupied the US Capitol for several hours, killing five people, including demonstrators and police officers . In this case, SNS such as Gab and Parler , which do not perform content moderation with freedom of speech, attracted attention.

Gab and Parler have become popular as places where the far right can speak freely, as many social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, crack down on radical remarks and misinformation about the 2020 US presidential election. However, Parler was strongly accused of not cracking down on content related to the Capitol raid, and a few days after the incident, Parler was removed from the App Store and Google Play and removed from AWS's web hosting service . It was. Parler finally came back on February 15th, local time, more than a month after the AWS server went down.

SNS 'Parler' is back for the first time in a month, due to AWS removal --GIGAZINE

While Parler was in trouble, Gab didn't get much public attention. However, on February 28, the leak site DDoSecrets said, 'Over 19,000 chats by 15,000 Gab users, over 70,000 public and private messages, user profiles, and hashed accounts. Announced that it will distribute 70GB of data including 'passwords, passwords of groups created in Gab' to journalists and researchers.

This data, called 'Gab Leaks,' was dumped by an anonymous hacker from Gab's back-end database. It seems that hackers collected these data by SQL injection that executes SQL statements that the application did not expect. The data collected includes account data from Trump, conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene , prominent supporter of Trump, Michael J. Lindell , and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Is included.

Emma Best, co-founder of DDoSecrets, told WIRED in an interview: 'It contains almost everything about Gab, including user data and private posts. A nearly complete analysis of Gab's users and content. It contains everything you need to do. '' For researchers observing militia, neo-Nazis, far-rights, QAnon, and everything that surrounds January 6 (the congressional building raid), Gab Leaks It's another gold vein. '

Since the data stolen from Gab this time contains a huge amount of personal information, DDoSecrets decided to limit the distribution of the data. It states that it will only be distributed to groups or individuals who have a proven track record of conducting research for the public good when inquired.

Gab founder Andrew Tova commented that Gab does not collect personal information such as user phone numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth, health and financial information. In addition, Gab is aware of a vulnerability related to SQL and has applied a patch.