4chan Currently Offline, Allegedly Hacked as of April 15

4chan, the controversial imageboard where users can anonymously share a variety of content, is experiencing downtime as of this morning. Thousands of visitors reported outages on Tuesday, according to DownDetector. Current speculation among users suggests that 4chan may have been hacked by an attacker exploiting an outdated version of PHP that the site continues to use, though these rumors have not been verified.

4chan has remained relatively unchanged since its founding by Christopher Poole, known as “moot,” in 2003. The platform has evolved over the years from a user base of Anonymous hacktivists to more fringe far-right groups. Poole sold 4chan to Hiroyuki Nishimura, the owner of competing Japanese imageboard 2channel, in 2015 after taking a position with Google. Since then, users report that minimal upgrades have been made to the site’s technology.

Rumors are circulating that the site’s source code and database may have been leaked. If any data is compromised, the most sensitive information would likely pertain to 4chan’s volunteer moderators, potentially including their login credentials and chat logs. As of now, there is no independent confirmation of these claims. We will provide updates if concrete information becomes available, but for the moment, the 4chan outage remains unresolved.

On social media, users have focused on the alleged last post reported before the site went down: an image of Jack Black from a Minecraft movie, accompanied by the words “CHICKEN JOCKEY.”

Topics
– Cybersecurity
– Social Media