The Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) hacktivism group decided to leak a large amount of information belonging to Gab.com, a right-wing social platform that is offered as an alternative with total freedom of expression for its users. Gab has become a refuge for radical ideological groups, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis, far right and conspiracy theorists.
Due to its characteristics, Gab.com is prohibited by more than 25 Internet service providers, including app stores, payment processors and hosting companies.
After spending about two weeks off duty, Gab.com administrators released an update denying rumors about a possible hacking incident, attributeing the flaws to combating a recent Bitcoin scam that would have affected some users. Andrew Torba, GAB’s CEO, was even questioned by some members of the press who claimed to be aware of a security incident affecting the systems of this platform.
Torba refused to acknowledge the security incident, even mentioning that a third party confirmed that its systems were completely safe and adding that Gab.com collects a minimal amount of information about its users, so such an incident would not have a big impact anyway.
Still, Torba acknowledged that the platform was affected by a SQL injection failure that was recently corrected as part of a security audit.
Emma Best, head of DDoSecrets, has constantly contradicted the platform’s official position. This group is similar to WikiLeaks registered as a non-profit organization with the California government involved in data collection, activism, technology research, among other topics.
The organization confirmed that DDoSecrets leaked about 70 GB of information including public posts, private publications, user profiles, hashed passwords, direct messages, and passwords in plain text.
Through her Twitter account, some members of the cybersecurity community questioned whether this leak was related to last month’s assault on the Capitol, to which Emma Best replied that while it was not a related issue, any security agency could use this data to find some participants in this incident.
DDoSecrets became relevant at the end of 2019, when it leaked a large amount of information from Cayman National Bank. Shortly the next, in an operation known as BlueLeaks, the organization leaked about 300 GB of information related to multiple detention centers in the U.S., resulting in the seizure of DDoSecrets servers.
To learn more about information security risks, malware variants, vulnerabilities and information technologies, feel free to access the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) website.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.