The 4CHAN controversial forum victim of a cyber attack and now inaccessible – Liberation
THE « Web asshole » is, for the moment, out of harm. For several hours this Tuesday, April 15, it is impossible to access the 4CHAN forum, often associated with the extreme right and with offensive content. A group of hackers, Soyjak. Party, says it is at the origin of this cyber attack and has the proof published messages directly on the home page of the site, before it was made inaccessible.
The hackers would not have stopped on such a good path and would also have published on several competing forums of the files containing personal data, probably information on the moderators and administrators of the site.
If this data leak is proven, it could lift the veil on the internal functioning of one of the most mysterious forums of the Internet. Created in 2003, 4chan is based on an image exchange network, according to the Japanese « imageboards » model. It lists sub-forms of all kinds: some associates of animates, manga and Japanese culture, others to pornography and « politically incorrect ».
Because of its very low moderation, racist, homophobic, misogynist or anti -Semitic messages swarm. Today, the site claims 20 million monthly visitors and is considered one of the most influential spaces on the Internet. It is also known to be the first platform to have organized online raids.
4chan is held by Hiroyuki Nishimura, a Japanese citizen who lives in Paris, after he bought the site to its creator Tim Poole, in 2015. Accustomed to controversies, the forum has been the subject of multiple justice in recent years, in particular for acts of cyberbullying or dissemination of illegal content.
The greatest controversy known by 4CHAN to date remains the « Gamergate » of 2014, when men have published misogynist messages and led harassment campaigns against women in the video game sector.
