Gab, a social networking site known for its conservative demographic, has been hacked by a group of far-left activists claiming that the stolen user data will be used to help journalists.
Andrew Torba, Gab founder and Christian technology entrepreneur, did not hold back in a post about the hackers who attacked his website, saying they were attacked by "mentally ill" hackers who also targeted law enforcement and their own family members last summer.
Torba continued by saying his account, along with Donald Trump's account, was compromised because of the attack, and Trump will go on stage to speak about the issue.
Torba says that the entire company is investigating the incident and that the vulnerabilities that the group exploited to access the data have now been corrected.
"” Gab.com (@getongab) February 28, 2021
Torba also claimed that the left-wing Wired is "in direct contact with the hacker and [was] essentially assisting the hacker in his efforts to smear our business and hurt you, our users."
The hackers, Distributed Denial of Secret (DDoSecrets), is saying that they are making "70GB of passwords, private posts, and more available to researchers, journalists, and social scientists."
Emma Best, a trans-far-left activist and co-founder of DDoSecrets, has a history of leaking private information. He previously leaked WikiLeaks group chats in defense of Hillary Clinton, and now will be leaking Gab's data.
Best told leftist outlet Wired that the data "contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data and private posts, everything someone needs to run a nearly complete analysis on Gab users and content."
"It's another gold mine of research for people looking at militias, neo-Nazis, the far-right, QAnon, and everything surrounding January 6," Best added.
Although Best is known to be against WikiLeaks, the website for their hacked material is a complete ripoff of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's creation, according to The Gateway Pundit. Their website is even called "GabLeaks", which sounds just like the website they are against.
According to Summit News, DDoSecrets are claiming that they were able to obtain the passwords for the accounts belonging to Infowars' Alex Jones, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. They claim they have not yet decrypted the passwords to access the accounts of said people.
Torba released an update into the incident and is telling Gab users to change their passwords and activate two-factor authentication on their Gab account. He added that since the platform doesn't store customer banking data, customer bank information is not affected by the breach in any way.
Those who upgraded to GabPRO and are using the Gab Shop also do not need to worry as these are separate systems, both of which do not appear to have been affected by the breach.
The Gab CEO said that the platform collects as little data as possible from users so as to protect user privacy. He added that the platform is "extremely public" by design, and due to these factors, "the overwhelming majority of the data in this breach is already public on the website for anyone to see," meaning most of the things in "GabLeaks" aren't secrets.
"Thank you for your continued support and prayers. We will never give up. We will never surrender. Nothing will stop us from our mission of defending and protecting the freedom of speech online for all people. To God be the glory," Torba wrote.
Gab has served as a big competitor for tech giants who are continuously de-platforming conservatives, attacking their freedom of speech. The website was gaining more than 10,000 users an hour and received 12 million visits in 12 hours following the suspension of Donald Trump's Twitter account, Independent UK wrote.
When President Donald Trump and other conservative users were silenced by various Big Tech platforms like Twitter and Facebook, they were able to continue connecting and conversing with others via platforms like Gab.
"I didn't set out to build a 'conservative social network' by any means. But I felt that it was time for a conservative leader to step up and to provide a forum where anybody can come and speak freely without fear of censorship," Torba told the Washington Post in 2016.
