Right Wing Social Media Platform Gab.Com Hacked, Data Leaked
Last month, as Parler was being deplatformed by Amazon, it was hacked and many gigabytes of data were taken and later made public.
In what seems like a sequel, right wing free speech social media platform Gab.com was hacked and, again, data was stolen and later published.
It is reported that Gab is described as a haven for extremists including white supremacists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the alt-right and QAnon conspiracy theorists. If this is true, the data is probably of interest to a lot of people and may be “damaging” to the people who created it.
The site went down for a short period last week after saying there was an issue that only affected a few accounts.
When contacted by the media, Gab’s CEO said that there was no independent confirmation of the breach, which likely is true. That of course does not mean that they were not breached. He also said that they don’t collect much personal information. If what he means is that they don’t collect drivers license numbers, he is probably right, but if what he means is potentially embarrassing or criminal-charge-causing posts, well, then, he might be wrong.
The CEO did admit that the site was vulnerable to a SQL injection attack that they fixed last week (like maybe at the same time that they went off line????).
The 70 gigabytes of data that has been leaked (so far) includes public posts, private posts, user profiles, hashed passwords, direct messages and plaintext passwords for groups.
Could the data be used by law enforcement to see if there is a connection with the January 6th riots at the Capitol. Probably.
Compared to the Parler leak, this could be, potentially, much worse, since it claims to contain both private posts and direct messages.
We also don’t know if the 70 gig of data leaked is all that was stolen or just the first installment.
Bottom line, assuming that something that you post on a public social media platform will remain private is probably not a great bet. Credit: Hackread
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