It appears that the security breach reported last week by Wired was genuine, as Gab is currently down as a consequence of the hack:
The social media site Gab blamed “oligarch tyrants” who keep the US “under occupation” for being forced offline, after they refused to pay a ransom in Bitcoin to a hacker who had pilfered gigabytes of user data through an exploit.
“We took the site down to investigate a security breach,” Gab announced on Monday afternoon via their Twitter account. Users trying to log into Gab were greeted with an “internal error” message and told to try again.
“Banks are banning us. Hackers are attacking us. Journalists are libeling us. Why?” Gab tweeted, calling the US “a totally subverted nation under the occupation of a handful of oligarch tyrants who use their power to destroy dissenters.”
Gab went offline after several verified accounts on the social media platform displayed a ransom note signed “cApTaIn JaXpArO,” claiming the credit for the hack and accusing CEO Andrew Torba of lying to his “despicable users” and not caring about their privacy.
The hacker, whose name is a reference to Captain Jack Sparrow of Disney’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise, claimed that last week’s hack “fully compromised” Gab, including 35 million public and three million private posts, 50,000 emails, 7,000 passwords.
More importantly, they claimed to have obtained 831 verification documents – “which the ransom was about” – but Gab refused to pay 8 Bitcoin for them.
Unfortunately, Torba is still trying to convince Republican politicians to help him rather than taking the necessary steps to relocate outside of a US system that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is actively opposed to his operation.
Gab is an American business run by law-abiding American citizens that can’t get a business checking account, can’t process credit and debit cards online, and can’t access basic online services run by tech monopolies. Where are our leaders? Where is the GOP?
What part of “bifactional ruling party” does he still not understand?
This is why it’s necessary to break free of the cult of free, and to wisely utilize whatever resources can be mustered. In not-at-all-unrelated news, UATV is about to pass the 2,000-video mark and SG is averaging nearly 80k posts per month. If you’re not subscribing yet, this is the right time to do so.