Posted on Aug 20, 2023
Hosting Company Used by Extremists Received $3 Million in Bitcoin After 2021 Hack
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"An unidentified source sent Epik, a web services company that caters to a far-right customer base, nearly $3 million worth of bitcoin one day after hackers announced that they had broken into the company’s servers, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Data Lab found."
Hosting Company Used by Extremists Received $3 Million in Bitcoin After 2021 Hack
Posted from splcenter.org
Hacking
Bitcoin
Conspiracy Theories
Posted 8 mo ago
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LTC Eugene Chu
..."A who’s who of the global far right
Prominent far-right extremist sites began turning to Epik after Epik’s services helped Twitter knockoff Gab get back online in 2018. Gab had been banned by its prior domain registrar after an October 2018 white supremacist terror attack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Since then, Epik has become a haven for websites with ties to right-wing extremism, with its client list representing a veritable “who’s who” of the global far-right movement. Among those who relied on Epik’s services are 8chan, an online message board that has hosted manifestos and livestreams from multiple white supremacist terrorists; Parler, a social media site popular among rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; and Stormfront, a once-popular online forum founded by Don Black, a former Klansman who was arrested in 1981 for attempting to invade a Caribbean island. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose junk-news site Infowars helped jump-start the 2021 Capitol insurrection, credited Epik with keeping his network of junk-news channels online.
“We wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for Epik. … They have all the services you need, and they are expanding,” Jones said during an April 2021 broadcast of his show.
The 2021 hack resulted in years of purchase records, company emails and customer accounts – including from Epik’s privacy service, Anonymize, which allowed customers to conceal their identity – being made available to the public. In addition to some 15 million unique email addresses, the customer data exposed by the hack included IP addresses, phone numbers, passwords and mailing addresses. The material allowed activists, journalists and researchers, including from the Southern Poverty Law Center, to identify the once-anonymous owners of numerous websites, including sites with ties to terrorist organizations."...
..."A who’s who of the global far right
Prominent far-right extremist sites began turning to Epik after Epik’s services helped Twitter knockoff Gab get back online in 2018. Gab had been banned by its prior domain registrar after an October 2018 white supremacist terror attack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Since then, Epik has become a haven for websites with ties to right-wing extremism, with its client list representing a veritable “who’s who” of the global far-right movement. Among those who relied on Epik’s services are 8chan, an online message board that has hosted manifestos and livestreams from multiple white supremacist terrorists; Parler, a social media site popular among rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; and Stormfront, a once-popular online forum founded by Don Black, a former Klansman who was arrested in 1981 for attempting to invade a Caribbean island. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose junk-news site Infowars helped jump-start the 2021 Capitol insurrection, credited Epik with keeping his network of junk-news channels online.
“We wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for Epik. … They have all the services you need, and they are expanding,” Jones said during an April 2021 broadcast of his show.
The 2021 hack resulted in years of purchase records, company emails and customer accounts – including from Epik’s privacy service, Anonymize, which allowed customers to conceal their identity – being made available to the public. In addition to some 15 million unique email addresses, the customer data exposed by the hack included IP addresses, phone numbers, passwords and mailing addresses. The material allowed activists, journalists and researchers, including from the Southern Poverty Law Center, to identify the once-anonymous owners of numerous websites, including sites with ties to terrorist organizations."...
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