4chan Hacked, Attacker Mainly Targeted Moderator Accounts

[Stealth]

In a blog post published a few hours ago, Christopher Poole, aka “moot,” the founder of 4chan, revealed that the popular image-based bulletin board was hacked.

The attack took place last week. The hacker leveraged a software vulnerability to gain access to administrative functions and data from a 4chan database. The attacker apparently wanted to expose the posting habits of a specific user he didn’t like.

“After careful review, we believe the intrusion was limited to imageboard moderation panels, our reports queue, and some tables in our backend database,” moot noted.

“Due to the way the intruder extracted information from the database, we have detailed logs of what was accessed. The logs indicate that primarily moderator account names and credentials were targeted.”

The hacker accessed the Pass credentials of three 4chan Pass users. The impacted individuals have been notified and offered refunds and lifetime Passes.

moot highlights the fact that 4chan doesn’t process any payment information, so the attacker couldn’t have gained access to financial data. Payment information is processed by Stripe.

As far as the vulnerability leveraged by the hacker is concerned, it has been patched shortly after 4chan became aware of it. Software and systems are being reviewed to prevent future breaches.

In a 4chan post published last week (removed since), a user revealed that the attacker was an Australian individual who wanted to expose “multiple abuses of power and violations of proper mod stewardship.” The attacker allegedly gained access to the details of over 12,000 sold Passes. He’s said to have had access to 4chan’s systems for a week.

This isn’t the first time 4chan is targeted by hackers. Back in June 2012, hackers of UGNazi redirected the site’s visitors to their Twitter account.

Source: 4chan Hacked, Attacker Mainly Targeted Moderator Accounts