Graphic by Pixabay / Illustration by CNET
Gab, an alternative social network popular with right-wing users, was hacked and a large amount of data – including passwords and private messages – was stolen. The company says it has received a ransom request for nearly $ 500,000 in bitcoin for the data.
The hacked data, called GabLeaks, was shared by the transparency group DDoSecrets. According to DDoSecrets, it contains 70 GB of public placements, private placements, user profiles, hash passwords, instant messaging and plain text passwords for groups. The group said it was only presenting the data set to journalists and researchers because of privacy concerns.
CEO Andrew Torba acknowledged the hack, which was reported by Wired on Sunday, in a message posted on the Gab account on Twitter, saying the social network was under attack. “The whole company is all investigating what happened and working to detect and resolve the issue,” Torba wrote in the message, which contained a transphobic slur. Torba said the company is working with law enforcement on the issue.
Torba announced the ransom request in a message on the company’s website on Monday.
“The individuals we hold to ransom are extortionists,” Torba wrote in the report. “We do not pay ransom. We do not negotiate with extortionists. Period.”
He also criticized DDoSecrets for the alleged intent to disclose the data to journalists for ethical reasons.
“These people are not ‘ethical hackers,'” Torba said. “There is nothing ‘ethical’ about directing millions of Internet users to political agendas.”
A hacker was able to siphon data from Gab’s website via a ‘vulnerability to SQL injection’, DDoSecrets told Wired.
CNET did not independently verify the contents of the Gab data. The social network could not be immediately reached for comment.
Gab took himself briefly offline last month when the social network was used in a bitcoin scam. Gab was not only hit by bitcoin wallet spam. Last July, Twitter hit a major bitcoin scam when hackers took over high-profile accounts, including those of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West and Barack Obama.
Gab, which had previously come under fire for anti-Semitic content, is a platform for free speech, a self-characterization also used by Parler, a right-wing Twitter clone. Parler was taken offline about a month after losing services to Amazon Web Services because the social network was used to organize the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill. Before Parler was taken offline, hackers were able to scrape data from the site to obtain a archive of posts, including deleted placements and location data for images and videos.
CNET’s Steven Musil contributed to this report.
Also read: Parler returns to monthly absence: here’s what you need to know