12 ms·

Epik Registrar Hacked

69 points by kristjank 5y ago

notadev 5y ago
Well this is shitty. I have several domains registered through Epik. I think it’s bullshit all of my personal information is now being shared in a torrent because there were other unsavory customers. I, and likely countless others, have nothing to do with any of these domains/people this site claims Epik is hosting.
- gkoberger 5y ago
  You're right, you don't deserve your information to be out there. However, Epik is a badly run registrar (as evident by the leaks), and the only reason any of us know about them is because they've worked so hard to attract unsavory customers. Registrars mostly offer the same service at the same price, and catering to unsavory clients is their only differentiating feature. It's their entire marketing scheme (take on customers that legitimate registrars won't), so it's not surprising that they're actually pretty illegitimate. I'm sorry your data was leaked, and I'd take this as a sign to move.
  - shiftpgdn 5y ago
    How is that any different than a well lauded service like nearlyfreespeach.net? Just because you believe in the first amendment doesn't mean you should be the target of harassment.
    - gkoberger 5y ago
      Every single registrar is targeted by hackers daily. I'm not convinced this is a sign of targeted harassment as much as just shoddy security practices.
      - Natsu 5y ago
        The hackers in this case released a statement giving their exact reasons for doing this, though, and it was hacked precisely because it hosts badspeech. So it's not a random hack, they did this specifically to give information out to activists. I wonder if the media outlets will continue with their policies of not reporting on hacked info or not?
        gkoberger 5y ago
        No media outlet in the world has ever had a policy of not reporting on hacks. Sure, they won't show the data or how to get it yourself, but that's crazy to say that media outlets don't report on hacks.
        Natsu 5y ago
        Many were advocating exactly that, though: https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/responsible-reporting-in-an-age-of-irresponsible-information/ https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/responsible-reporting-in... Then at least some places put into place policies like that, though some were then modified later: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked-materials-policy-in-wake-of-new-york-post-controversy/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked...
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Twitter is not a "media outlet". That kind of mentality is the one that encouraged thousands to microwave their iPhone to charge it.
        Natsu 5y ago
        I agree that Twitter is not something generally trustworthy, but that ignores Twitter's role in breaking news. The many places that generally are called "media outlets" that have reported news with tweets as their primary sources to the point where I think you would have trouble finding a media outlet that is an exception.
    - eigengrau5150 5y ago
      NFS.net probably wouldn't tolerate many of the clients that Epik takes pride in hosting, though they do take on some of that type to fund their MFFAM efforts. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq?keywords=offensive&submit=Search+for+Keywords&form=1#BecauseFuckNazisThatsWhy https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq?keywords=offensiv... > What is the "MFFAM" policy? > Because we believe in free speech, we host a small amount of offensive content. Some days, that's really hard to do. There are views expressed using our service that we find personally repugnant. (Although we don't host as much of that type of content as one might expect, given our extremely broad Terms & Conditions of Service. The simple fact is that our service is for smart people, which disproportionately excludes people who hold those types of views.) > Nonetheless, our content policy does occasionally put us in a position of accepting money to host sites we find abhorrent. But we have no interest in profiting from sites like that. For that reason, since our founding in 2002, we have what we have more recently started calling the MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. > When we find a repugnant site on our service, we mark the account. We receive reports about all payments to such accounts, and we take a portion of that money larger than the amount of estimated profit and we donate it to the best organization we can find. The best organization in any given case meets two criteria: > 1. The recipient organization does share our values. > 2. The recipient organization is as opposite (and hopefully as offensive) as possible to the site operator that funded the donation. > Examples of organizations that have received funding over the years include the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, local chapters of the NAACP, the National Bail Fund Network, the American Immigration Council, the Trevor Project, and others. > This policy isn't perfect by any means, but neither is the world we live in. MFFAM does let us help the organizations that we hope will eventually get us closer to that perfect world. It helps the people who operate repugnant sites understand that they are here because we tolerate them... barely... not because we endorse them or their views. It also does a pretty decent job of further thinning out the number of such sites, as a fair number of people who run them only believe in free speech when they're the ones talking.
    - john-doe 5y ago
      https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisThatsWhy https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisT...
  - notadev 5y ago
    I hadn’t heard any claims about unsavory customers until I was already a customer myself. I joined them because their Whois privacy was free while I had to pay for it on GoDaddy, nothing else.
    - somehnguy 5y ago
      Namecheap offers it for free as well if you’re looking for a place to move. I use namecheap as my registrar and cloudflare for dns. Though the free namecheap dns worked completely fine for the years I used it too.
      - notadev 5y ago
        Thanks, it looks like I’m going this route. It’s a bit pricey to transfer all domains at once so I have to pick and choose. For anyone else in the same boat, they offer a promo code “TLD21TS8” which reduces the transfer costs by 64%.
  - lrae 5y ago
    > and the only reason any of us know about them is because they've worked so hard to attract unsavory customers No. Epik is (also) known for providing good prices for (medium sized) domain owners (and everybody else who just wanted to transfer their domains for a fair price.): https://www.namepros.com/threads/epik-com-promo-deals-and-happy-hour-mega-thread.1148974/ https://www.namepros.com/threads/epik-com-promo-deals-and-ha...
    - tzs 5y ago
      That linked forum discussion does not exactly make Epik look good. The first post from someone not employed by Epik is someone from Nigeria asking if they can buy a .US domain. An Epik staff member tells them that .US are restricted to those with US contact information (which is almost correct--you need to be a US citizen, resident, organization, or a foreign entity with a bona fide presence in the US). Then the Epik CEO answers that post suggesting how to circumvent the .US rules: > However, just use the free WHOIS privacy proxy. Problem solved. You will need to keep the privacy on in this case. That won't actually work because (as the Epik staff member points out in another reply to the Nigerian post) .US does not allow WHOIS privacy proxies.
      - lrae 5y ago
        I didn't link it to make Epik look good. Don't like Epik, don't like its CEO. But Epik is absolutely one if not the registrar you stumbled upon the last couple of years if you looked for good transfer prices. I just think users should give other users in this thread the benefit of the doubt that they weren't Epik customers to support a fascist, hardcore libertarian Christian, Nazi, ... CEO and his company in any form. They might just have googled for fair .com transfers and transferred a couple of domains in.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        I don't bite. There's a whole diaspora of name registrars, but only one of them marketed themselves as the right-leaning choice (Rob Monster made damn sure of that). Hacks like this are the price of doing business with egomaniacs.
- caslon 5y ago
  I have to ask: If it wasn't for the freedom to share information, as is given by the Constitution, why'd you pick Epik? Their prices aren't particularly good, they don't really advertise themselves as having any features other registrars don't have, and don't really seem to have a lot going for them. They aren't even acknowledging the fact that they got hacked: https://twitter.com/robmonster/status/1437543353357328389 https://twitter.com/robmonster/status/1437543353357328389 It sucks what happened to you, but the only thing Epik sold themselves with is the same freedom that these people are utilizing.
  - RIMR 5y ago
    They either are extremely privacy and freedom oriented and chose Epik with a false belief that they would uphold their privacy and freedom of speech. Or they run websites that contain content that would get them removed from most mainstream platforms, and likely would earn them an unforgiving response here should they share those sites. I am inclined to believe it is the latter, as that is literally the selling point of Epik's services: That your violent or extremist rhetoric won't get your terminated from the service.
    - shiftpgdn 5y ago
      Just because someone does not censor other does not make them a neo-nazi or white supremacist. This is an ideological difference.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        Not in general. But in this specific case? They are neo-nazis and white supremacists.
        rvz 5y ago
        That doesn't make it any right to involve leaking the personal information of innocent users using the platform because they found that Epik was offering WHOIS privacy cheaper than another registrar. (GoDaddy) The ones who hacked Epik are just as bad as the 'neo-nazis' and 'white supremacists' you speak of.
- RIMR 5y ago
  Epik is owned by Rob Monster, who is a open and proud Neo Nazi and antisemite. You chose to do business with him despite of who he was and what he enables. That you didn't understand these facts before hand was your failure. This should be a lesson in exercising moral and ethical restraint, and being conscious of who you do business with. Guilt by association sucks, but I am very skeptical about anyone who says that they run a website on Epik, simply because it is the go-to webhost for extremist and violent content.
  - techrat 5y ago
    > Epik is owned by Rob Monster, who is a open and proud Neo Nazi and antisemite. You chose to do business with him despite of who he was and what he enables When I first heard of Epik, it was due to the kinds of sites/domains he handled that were being kicked off other services for egregious reasons (including and not limited to: hosting white supremacist shooter manifestos, doxxing for murder). That in of itself told me to stay far, far away from Epik. Advocating for free speech doesn't mean moral abandonment, either. There's a reason things like fighting words, threats of harm aren't considered protected speech... and there's (sadly) quite a few on here who still have yet to learn that part of the lesson when it comes to speech online. Epik's business model is to specifically cater to Neo Nazis. https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-fou... https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13]
- xqzqz 5y ago
  Why didn't you use a trustworthy host? You know the right can't netsec.
- peanut_worm 5y ago
  Your information is being shared in a torrent because Epik has bad security.
  - rvz 5y ago
    That can be true of any website or service part of the haveibeenpwned.com database.
  - nyolfen 5y ago
    loling as i imagine applying this logic to the capitol police for 1/6
slownews45 5y ago
Wow - a lot of unsavory folks on that platform. Dump includes All domain purchases All domain transfers in/out All whois history All DNS changes All email forwards, catch-alls, etc Payment history (no credit card data) Account credentials Over 500,000 private keys Not a good look for these "privacy" focused players. I use AWS Route53 and Google for domain registration. Despite being "invaders" of privacy supposedly, so far they've done a pretty good job keeping my data from leaking - nothing too interesting anyways but. One worry would be employers or others taking lists like this and doing some screening of candidates etc through it.
- RIMR 5y ago
  To be fair, if I found that a job applicant was also actively participating in a Neo-Nazi website, I would absolutely never hire them, whether they intended for me to know about it or not. If I had already hired them and found out, they would unemployed quite quickly. I would never expose the people who work for me to that kind of toxicity, nor would I expose myself and my organization to that kind of liability. I am all for freedom of speech, insofar that people don't get charged with crimes for participating in protected of speech, but I have absolutely no reason at all to tolerate those people, and feel as though I have a moral obligation to keep them away from the people I care about.
  - livinginfear 5y ago
    What on earth are you talking about? Epik is not a 'neo-nazi' website (whatever you think a 'neo-nazi' is), it's a domain registrar. So please spare us your oh so righteous indignation.
    - techrat 5y ago
      Their business model is to specifically cater towards neo nazis. https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-fou... https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13]
neither_color 5y ago
Whenever the first word used to describe someone other than a belligerent in world war 2 is “fascist” I’m immediately skeptical of the author’s real intention.
- xqzqz 5y ago
  I guess if you're really so out of the loop you've never heard of The Daily Stormer or the other fascist sites hosted there you could be skeptical.
  - neither_color 5y ago
    The OP doesnt link any examples, and there multiple comments in this thread saying they are affected. If these noble white hats are interested in punishing fascism why dont they dump only fascist websites instead of everyone?
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      The audience for this dump is people who are willing and able to do that sort of filtering.
- RIMR 5y ago
  You seem awfully defensive of fascism, which makes me pretty skeptical of your real intention in expressing this.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Some of the high profile hosted sites are fairly objectively fascist. Yes, the hackers should have filtered their leak to those clients, but the word is being used pretty truthfully.
vorpalhex 5y ago
It frustrates and disappoints me to see hacks like this happen out of some sense of moral superiority. For whatever "fascists" this harms, it will harm significantly more innocent people. Two wrongs do not make a right.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mplewis 5y ago
  Why did you quote fascists? That’s how many of Epik’s customers self-describe.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    I have been called a fascist for voting for Biden and disagreeing with extremist beliefs. The term has been so diluted as to have no meaning which is a shame, because the fascists were a terrible blight upon the 20th century. Even if someone was a self declared fascist, that is still not justification.
- techrat 5y ago
  Epik's business model is to specifically cater to fascists. > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) No need for quotes, bruh.
livinginfear 5y ago
I own several domains with Epik. I bought them through Epik for no other reason than my friend having an affiliate link. I don't host political content. I don't even know anything about them as a company. I am actually very angry as I type this. I don't care who else they let purchase domains from them, I didn't deserve this. I hope whoever did this is caught and jailed.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  In the future, do some research into whose service you employ beforehand. You should not be surprised that you might get in trouble one way or another for employing the services of neo-nazis.
  - rvz 5y ago
    You still have some cleaning to-do on YouTube, since they are still hosting neo-nazi rock band videos on there. Does that mean everyone deserves to get their YouTube accounts hacked because of some bad videos on someones platform?
    - darnfish 5y ago
      I think it's different when a service offers their services to these groups with open arms, v.s. a company like Google who actively tries to take down that kind of content
      - lugged 5y ago
        Big fash, ok, little fash bad. Gotcha.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Yes, Youtube specifically is a big problem.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    That allegation is made so often a lot of people just tune it out. How am I supposed to know who's actually a neo nazi and who just annoyed the wrong liar?
rvz 5y ago
It's is all fun and games for these 'hacktivists' and 'vigilantes' trying to hunt so called 'fascists' when their actions have now affected innocent people and their sensitive information is now leaked. Maybe they themselves are the criminals and the fascists all along.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nemothekid 5y ago
The initial comments here are pretty odd. I think it's the first time I've stepped into a HN thread where people are mad at the hackers because the target company decided to hash their passwords in unsalted md5.
- techrat 5y ago
  And how often you see on HN how people should vet who they do business with... but now are saying they're mad at hackers for going after someone who "happens to host some bad websites and not someone like Youtube instead cause they have [this] video, too!" Epik is notorious for being a safe haven to the most extreme of right wing sites. There's simply no way you could not know what their business model is. Guilt by association might suck, but they still willingly associated.
- octopoc 5y ago
  Are there are unsalted passwords in the leak though? I haven't downloaded any of it and the description doesn't mention this.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958 https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958
- heyitsguay 5y ago
  HN, truly a place with a diversity of opinions spanning the entire political spectrum, nonetheless has sadly taken to leaning net-alt-right over the past few years. Anti-anti-fascist sentiment trumps pro-hacker sentiment in this case.
  - plandis 5y ago
    I’m pretty left leaning but I don’t think it’s right to leak all of their customers simply because some subset of the domains were used for unsavory purposes. That’s not a fascist ideology, I think people should have their privacy respected and this will harm innocent individuals.
zamadatix 5y ago
I realize this portion isn't the focus but it caught me a bit off guard: "Due to its size, it's incompatible with most torrent clients and many users will have difficulty downloading the data. When we're able, we'll release a more accessible version of the data." As someone who downloads a lot of 4k HDR... Linux ISOs... (I have the highest level subscriptions to Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Spotify, Amazon, Crunchyroll, and probably more I'm forgetting but not all of my devices will get the 4k stream due to DRM requirements so depending where I want to watch it I'll just download it instead) I've tried about every popular torrent client I've heard of and none have had problems with 100 GB+ sized torrents (or even much larger). Is this really a thing or are a lot of people just using a 10 year outdated version of uTorrent or something?
- techrat 5y ago
  It might be the number of files and subdirectories rather than the total file size of the torrent.
- bikezen 5y ago
  Thats the size of the actual .torrent file, all the metadata. Not the size of the data the torrent is pointing to.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Apart from the hilarity of the idea there are multiple petabytes of data in this leak - no, the torrent file was actually pretty small. About the size you'd expect for 180 GB of payload with a decent number of files.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      The torrent file is 32Mb. That's really big for a torrent file, and it made my deluge client choke.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
an_acct 5y ago
Epik is one of several registrars I've used. They were the first search result many years ago for a particular TLD. This was before any drama regarding them being a haven for unsavory sites. I stayed because I thought I would be incrementally safer against social engineering attacks. All of my sites are things you might see submitted here.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "I stayed because I thought I would be incrementally safer against social engineering attacks." In what ways?
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Lesson learned, then: Don't do business with neo-nazis in the future. There are many reasons why following that simple principle is a good idea, and you have now discovered one of them.
BitAstronaut 5y ago
https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/Anonymous-Presents_-Operation-Epik-Fail-2.pdf https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/Anonymous-Presents_-Op...
- zamadatix 5y ago
  For those that don't want to open a PDF hyperlink from a 2 day old account on a topic related to hacking this twitter post linked elsewhere in the thread already has a picture of the above content: https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958 https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958
  - BitAstronaut 5y ago
    My apology.
diogenesjunior 5y ago
lots of shilling from techrat in this thread
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
Not taking a position on the content of the website(s) (I don't even know who Epik was until i came across this). However, what i am concerned about is fascism. The wiki entry classifies fascism as such: ". . .characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society" How is this suppression of an opposing political voice considered moral, legal or otherwise permissible? And before someone here responds with "Well, their content is violent", we have laws in our society. Period. Extra judicial anything is simply not on.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beezischillin 5y ago
Putting politics aside (I know, it's difficult), I can't help but wonder why is it that even with companies like these, marketing comes first? Looking at Gab, Parler and now Epik, it confuses my you'd paint a giant target on your back before making sure that everything's as secure as can be. Parler was basically a Wordpress instance hacked through one of the plugins they ran. (And since it was a WP instance the also had the whole thing scraped because of the sequential nature of the IDs Wordpress uses.) Gab rolled their own SQL injection mitigation and failed at it, published the source code themselves since they moved to the Mastodon network and then tried to cover up the whole thing --- and got hacked again because they never reset the user tokens. And now this with Epik. I understand the need to attract a clientele and free speech in itself can be attractive because there's so many issues stemming from automated content removal that people often have issues with the current providers but it simply makes no sense to set yourself up for a politically motivated hack and do nothing to prevent it... it's pretty crazy.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Because if these people were competent, they would not be neo-nazis. This is not an ideology for thoughtful, intelligent people. So no, we can't really put politics aside. It is all part of the same whole.
t0bia_s 5y ago
I never heard about Epik before. Yet, my personal email (that I don't even use for web login) is there. How?

69 points by kristjank 5y ago

Well this is shitty. I have several domains registered through Epik. I think it’s bullshit all of my personal information is now being shared in a torrent because there were other unsavory customers. I, and likely countless others, have nothing to do with any of these domains/people this site claims Epik is hosting.

gkoberger 5y ago
You're right, you don't deserve your information to be out there. However, Epik is a badly run registrar (as evident by the leaks), and the only reason any of us know about them is because they've worked so hard to attract unsavory customers. Registrars mostly offer the same service at the same price, and catering to unsavory clients is their only differentiating feature. It's their entire marketing scheme (take on customers that legitimate registrars won't), so it's not surprising that they're actually pretty illegitimate. I'm sorry your data was leaked, and I'd take this as a sign to move.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  How is that any different than a well lauded service like nearlyfreespeach.net? Just because you believe in the first amendment doesn't mean you should be the target of harassment.
  - gkoberger 5y ago
    Every single registrar is targeted by hackers daily. I'm not convinced this is a sign of targeted harassment as much as just shoddy security practices.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      The hackers in this case released a statement giving their exact reasons for doing this, though, and it was hacked precisely because it hosts badspeech. So it's not a random hack, they did this specifically to give information out to activists. I wonder if the media outlets will continue with their policies of not reporting on hacked info or not?
      - gkoberger 5y ago
        No media outlet in the world has ever had a policy of not reporting on hacks. Sure, they won't show the data or how to get it yourself, but that's crazy to say that media outlets don't report on hacks.
        Natsu 5y ago
        Many were advocating exactly that, though: https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/responsible-reporting-in-an-age-of-irresponsible-information/ https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/responsible-reporting-in... Then at least some places put into place policies like that, though some were then modified later: https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked-materials-policy-in-wake-of-new-york-post-controversy/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/16/twitter-changes-its-hacked...
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Twitter is not a "media outlet". That kind of mentality is the one that encouraged thousands to microwave their iPhone to charge it.
        Natsu 5y ago
        I agree that Twitter is not something generally trustworthy, but that ignores Twitter's role in breaking news. The many places that generally are called "media outlets" that have reported news with tweets as their primary sources to the point where I think you would have trouble finding a media outlet that is an exception.
  - eigengrau5150 5y ago
    NFS.net probably wouldn't tolerate many of the clients that Epik takes pride in hosting, though they do take on some of that type to fund their MFFAM efforts. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq?keywords=offensive&submit=Search+for+Keywords&form=1#BecauseFuckNazisThatsWhy https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq?keywords=offensiv... > What is the "MFFAM" policy? > Because we believe in free speech, we host a small amount of offensive content. Some days, that's really hard to do. There are views expressed using our service that we find personally repugnant. (Although we don't host as much of that type of content as one might expect, given our extremely broad Terms & Conditions of Service. The simple fact is that our service is for smart people, which disproportionately excludes people who hold those types of views.) > Nonetheless, our content policy does occasionally put us in a position of accepting money to host sites we find abhorrent. But we have no interest in profiting from sites like that. For that reason, since our founding in 2002, we have what we have more recently started calling the MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. > When we find a repugnant site on our service, we mark the account. We receive reports about all payments to such accounts, and we take a portion of that money larger than the amount of estimated profit and we donate it to the best organization we can find. The best organization in any given case meets two criteria: > 1. The recipient organization does share our values. > 2. The recipient organization is as opposite (and hopefully as offensive) as possible to the site operator that funded the donation. > Examples of organizations that have received funding over the years include the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, local chapters of the NAACP, the National Bail Fund Network, the American Immigration Council, the Trevor Project, and others. > This policy isn't perfect by any means, but neither is the world we live in. MFFAM does let us help the organizations that we hope will eventually get us closer to that perfect world. It helps the people who operate repugnant sites understand that they are here because we tolerate them... barely... not because we endorse them or their views. It also does a pretty decent job of further thinning out the number of such sites, as a fair number of people who run them only believe in free speech when they're the ones talking.
  - john-doe 5y ago
    https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisThatsWhy https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#BecauseFuckNazisT...
- notadev 5y ago
  I hadn’t heard any claims about unsavory customers until I was already a customer myself. I joined them because their Whois privacy was free while I had to pay for it on GoDaddy, nothing else.
  - somehnguy 5y ago
    Namecheap offers it for free as well if you’re looking for a place to move. I use namecheap as my registrar and cloudflare for dns. Though the free namecheap dns worked completely fine for the years I used it too.
    - notadev 5y ago
      Thanks, it looks like I’m going this route. It’s a bit pricey to transfer all domains at once so I have to pick and choose. For anyone else in the same boat, they offer a promo code “TLD21TS8” which reduces the transfer costs by 64%.
- lrae 5y ago
  > and the only reason any of us know about them is because they've worked so hard to attract unsavory customers No. Epik is (also) known for providing good prices for (medium sized) domain owners (and everybody else who just wanted to transfer their domains for a fair price.): https://www.namepros.com/threads/epik-com-promo-deals-and-happy-hour-mega-thread.1148974/ https://www.namepros.com/threads/epik-com-promo-deals-and-ha...
  - tzs 5y ago
    That linked forum discussion does not exactly make Epik look good. The first post from someone not employed by Epik is someone from Nigeria asking if they can buy a .US domain. An Epik staff member tells them that .US are restricted to those with US contact information (which is almost correct--you need to be a US citizen, resident, organization, or a foreign entity with a bona fide presence in the US). Then the Epik CEO answers that post suggesting how to circumvent the .US rules: > However, just use the free WHOIS privacy proxy. Problem solved. You will need to keep the privacy on in this case. That won't actually work because (as the Epik staff member points out in another reply to the Nigerian post) .US does not allow WHOIS privacy proxies.
    - lrae 5y ago
      I didn't link it to make Epik look good. Don't like Epik, don't like its CEO. But Epik is absolutely one if not the registrar you stumbled upon the last couple of years if you looked for good transfer prices. I just think users should give other users in this thread the benefit of the doubt that they weren't Epik customers to support a fascist, hardcore libertarian Christian, Nazi, ... CEO and his company in any form. They might just have googled for fair .com transfers and transferred a couple of domains in.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        I don't bite. There's a whole diaspora of name registrars, but only one of them marketed themselves as the right-leaning choice (Rob Monster made damn sure of that). Hacks like this are the price of doing business with egomaniacs.
caslon 5y ago
I have to ask: If it wasn't for the freedom to share information, as is given by the Constitution, why'd you pick Epik? Their prices aren't particularly good, they don't really advertise themselves as having any features other registrars don't have, and don't really seem to have a lot going for them. They aren't even acknowledging the fact that they got hacked: https://twitter.com/robmonster/status/1437543353357328389 https://twitter.com/robmonster/status/1437543353357328389 It sucks what happened to you, but the only thing Epik sold themselves with is the same freedom that these people are utilizing.
- RIMR 5y ago
  They either are extremely privacy and freedom oriented and chose Epik with a false belief that they would uphold their privacy and freedom of speech. Or they run websites that contain content that would get them removed from most mainstream platforms, and likely would earn them an unforgiving response here should they share those sites. I am inclined to believe it is the latter, as that is literally the selling point of Epik's services: That your violent or extremist rhetoric won't get your terminated from the service.
  - shiftpgdn 5y ago
    Just because someone does not censor other does not make them a neo-nazi or white supremacist. This is an ideological difference.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Not in general. But in this specific case? They are neo-nazis and white supremacists.
      - rvz 5y ago
        That doesn't make it any right to involve leaking the personal information of innocent users using the platform because they found that Epik was offering WHOIS privacy cheaper than another registrar. (GoDaddy) The ones who hacked Epik are just as bad as the 'neo-nazis' and 'white supremacists' you speak of.
RIMR 5y ago
Epik is owned by Rob Monster, who is a open and proud Neo Nazi and antisemite. You chose to do business with him despite of who he was and what he enables. That you didn't understand these facts before hand was your failure. This should be a lesson in exercising moral and ethical restraint, and being conscious of who you do business with. Guilt by association sucks, but I am very skeptical about anyone who says that they run a website on Epik, simply because it is the go-to webhost for extremist and violent content.
- techrat 5y ago
  > Epik is owned by Rob Monster, who is a open and proud Neo Nazi and antisemite. You chose to do business with him despite of who he was and what he enables When I first heard of Epik, it was due to the kinds of sites/domains he handled that were being kicked off other services for egregious reasons (including and not limited to: hosting white supremacist shooter manifestos, doxxing for murder). That in of itself told me to stay far, far away from Epik. Advocating for free speech doesn't mean moral abandonment, either. There's a reason things like fighting words, threats of harm aren't considered protected speech... and there's (sadly) quite a few on here who still have yet to learn that part of the lesson when it comes to speech online. Epik's business model is to specifically cater to Neo Nazis. https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-fou... https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13]
xqzqz 5y ago
Why didn't you use a trustworthy host? You know the right can't netsec.
peanut_worm 5y ago
Your information is being shared in a torrent because Epik has bad security.
- rvz 5y ago
  That can be true of any website or service part of the haveibeenpwned.com database.
- nyolfen 5y ago
  loling as i imagine applying this logic to the capitol police for 1/6

slownews45 5y ago

Wow - a lot of unsavory folks on that platform. Dump includes All domain purchases All domain transfers in/out All whois history All DNS changes All email forwards, catch-alls, etc Payment history (no credit card data) Account credentials Over 500,000 private keys Not a good look for these "privacy" focused players. I use AWS Route53 and Google for domain registration. Despite being "invaders" of privacy supposedly, so far they've done a pretty good job keeping my data from leaking - nothing too interesting anyways but. One worry would be employers or others taking lists like this and doing some screening of candidates etc through it.

RIMR 5y ago
To be fair, if I found that a job applicant was also actively participating in a Neo-Nazi website, I would absolutely never hire them, whether they intended for me to know about it or not. If I had already hired them and found out, they would unemployed quite quickly. I would never expose the people who work for me to that kind of toxicity, nor would I expose myself and my organization to that kind of liability. I am all for freedom of speech, insofar that people don't get charged with crimes for participating in protected of speech, but I have absolutely no reason at all to tolerate those people, and feel as though I have a moral obligation to keep them away from the people I care about.
- livinginfear 5y ago
  What on earth are you talking about? Epik is not a 'neo-nazi' website (whatever you think a 'neo-nazi' is), it's a domain registrar. So please spare us your oh so righteous indignation.
  - techrat 5y ago
    Their business model is to specifically cater towards neo nazis. https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-found-a-web-host-savior https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4yg9/the-far-right-has-fou... https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13]

neither_color 5y ago

Whenever the first word used to describe someone other than a belligerent in world war 2 is “fascist” I’m immediately skeptical of the author’s real intention.

xqzqz 5y ago
I guess if you're really so out of the loop you've never heard of The Daily Stormer or the other fascist sites hosted there you could be skeptical.
- neither_color 5y ago
  The OP doesnt link any examples, and there multiple comments in this thread saying they are affected. If these noble white hats are interested in punishing fascism why dont they dump only fascist websites instead of everyone?
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    The audience for this dump is people who are willing and able to do that sort of filtering.
RIMR 5y ago
You seem awfully defensive of fascism, which makes me pretty skeptical of your real intention in expressing this.
happytoexplain 5y ago
Some of the high profile hosted sites are fairly objectively fascist. Yes, the hackers should have filtered their leak to those clients, but the word is being used pretty truthfully.

vorpalhex 5y ago

It frustrates and disappoints me to see hacks like this happen out of some sense of moral superiority. For whatever "fascists" this harms, it will harm significantly more innocent people. Two wrongs do not make a right.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mplewis 5y ago
Why did you quote fascists? That’s how many of Epik’s customers self-describe.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  I have been called a fascist for voting for Biden and disagreeing with extremist beliefs. The term has been so diluted as to have no meaning which is a shame, because the fascists were a terrible blight upon the 20th century. Even if someone was a self declared fascist, that is still not justification.
techrat 5y ago
Epik's business model is to specifically cater to fascists. > Epik is known for providing services to websites with far-right content, such as the social network Gab, video hosting service BitChute, conspiracy theory website InfoWars, and neo-Nazi message board website The Daily Stormer.[1][6][28] It was described in 2019 by Vice as "a safehaven for the extreme right" and in 2021 by The Seattle Times as "a home for far-right websites" because of its willingness to host far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.[1][29][30] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph wrote that Epik was "a safe harbour for websites said to be enabling the spread far-right extremism and carrying Neo-Nazi content";[25] the same year, Fortune called the company the "right wing’s best friend online".[9] NPR reported in February 2021 that "when websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet, the sites often turn to [Epik] for a lifeline."[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epik_(company) No need for quotes, bruh.

livinginfear 5y ago

I own several domains with Epik. I bought them through Epik for no other reason than my friend having an affiliate link. I don't host political content. I don't even know anything about them as a company. I am actually very angry as I type this. I don't care who else they let purchase domains from them, I didn't deserve this. I hope whoever did this is caught and jailed.

user-the-name 5y ago
In the future, do some research into whose service you employ beforehand. You should not be surprised that you might get in trouble one way or another for employing the services of neo-nazis.
- rvz 5y ago
  You still have some cleaning to-do on YouTube, since they are still hosting neo-nazi rock band videos on there. Does that mean everyone deserves to get their YouTube accounts hacked because of some bad videos on someones platform?
  - darnfish 5y ago
    I think it's different when a service offers their services to these groups with open arms, v.s. a company like Google who actively tries to take down that kind of content
    - lugged 5y ago
      Big fash, ok, little fash bad. Gotcha.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Yes, Youtube specifically is a big problem.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  That allegation is made so often a lot of people just tune it out. How am I supposed to know who's actually a neo nazi and who just annoyed the wrong liar?

rvz 5y ago

It's is all fun and games for these 'hacktivists' and 'vigilantes' trying to hunt so called 'fascists' when their actions have now affected innocent people and their sensitive information is now leaked. Maybe they themselves are the criminals and the fascists all along.

deleted 5y ago
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nemothekid 5y ago

The initial comments here are pretty odd. I think it's the first time I've stepped into a HN thread where people are mad at the hackers because the target company decided to hash their passwords in unsalted md5.

techrat 5y ago
And how often you see on HN how people should vet who they do business with... but now are saying they're mad at hackers for going after someone who "happens to host some bad websites and not someone like Youtube instead cause they have [this] video, too!" Epik is notorious for being a safe haven to the most extreme of right wing sites. There's simply no way you could not know what their business model is. Guilt by association might suck, but they still willingly associated.
octopoc 5y ago
Are there are unsalted passwords in the leak though? I haven't downloaded any of it and the description doesn't mention this.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958 https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958
heyitsguay 5y ago
HN, truly a place with a diversity of opinions spanning the entire political spectrum, nonetheless has sadly taken to leaning net-alt-right over the past few years. Anti-anti-fascist sentiment trumps pro-hacker sentiment in this case.
- plandis 5y ago
  I’m pretty left leaning but I don’t think it’s right to leak all of their customers simply because some subset of the domains were used for unsavory purposes. That’s not a fascist ideology, I think people should have their privacy respected and this will harm innocent individuals.

zamadatix 5y ago

I realize this portion isn't the focus but it caught me a bit off guard: "Due to its size, it's incompatible with most torrent clients and many users will have difficulty downloading the data. When we're able, we'll release a more accessible version of the data." As someone who downloads a lot of 4k HDR... Linux ISOs... (I have the highest level subscriptions to Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Spotify, Amazon, Crunchyroll, and probably more I'm forgetting but not all of my devices will get the 4k stream due to DRM requirements so depending where I want to watch it I'll just download it instead) I've tried about every popular torrent client I've heard of and none have had problems with 100 GB+ sized torrents (or even much larger). Is this really a thing or are a lot of people just using a 10 year outdated version of uTorrent or something?

techrat 5y ago
It might be the number of files and subdirectories rather than the total file size of the torrent.
bikezen 5y ago
Thats the size of the actual .torrent file, all the metadata. Not the size of the data the torrent is pointing to.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Apart from the hilarity of the idea there are multiple petabytes of data in this leak - no, the torrent file was actually pretty small. About the size you'd expect for 180 GB of payload with a decent number of files.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    The torrent file is 32Mb. That's really big for a torrent file, and it made my deluge client choke.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

an_acct 5y ago

Epik is one of several registrars I've used. They were the first search result many years ago for a particular TLD. This was before any drama regarding them being a haven for unsavory sites. I stayed because I thought I would be incrementally safer against social engineering attacks. All of my sites are things you might see submitted here.

zamadatix 5y ago
"I stayed because I thought I would be incrementally safer against social engineering attacks." In what ways?
user-the-name 5y ago
Lesson learned, then: Don't do business with neo-nazis in the future. There are many reasons why following that simple principle is a good idea, and you have now discovered one of them.

BitAstronaut 5y ago

https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/Anonymous-Presents_-Operation-Epik-Fail-2.pdf https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/Anonymous-Presents_-Op...

zamadatix 5y ago
For those that don't want to open a PDF hyperlink from a 2 day old account on a topic related to hacking this twitter post linked elsewhere in the thread already has a picture of the above content: https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958 https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1437482759241469958
- BitAstronaut 5y ago
  My apology.

diogenesjunior 5y ago

lots of shilling from techrat in this thread

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

Not taking a position on the content of the website(s) (I don't even know who Epik was until i came across this). However, what i am concerned about is fascism. The wiki entry classifies fascism as such: ". . .characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society" How is this suppression of an opposing political voice considered moral, legal or otherwise permissible? And before someone here responds with "Well, their content is violent", we have laws in our society. Period. Extra judicial anything is simply not on.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

beezischillin 5y ago

Putting politics aside (I know, it's difficult), I can't help but wonder why is it that even with companies like these, marketing comes first? Looking at Gab, Parler and now Epik, it confuses my you'd paint a giant target on your back before making sure that everything's as secure as can be. Parler was basically a Wordpress instance hacked through one of the plugins they ran. (And since it was a WP instance the also had the whole thing scraped because of the sequential nature of the IDs Wordpress uses.) Gab rolled their own SQL injection mitigation and failed at it, published the source code themselves since they moved to the Mastodon network and then tried to cover up the whole thing --- and got hacked again because they never reset the user tokens. And now this with Epik. I understand the need to attract a clientele and free speech in itself can be attractive because there's so many issues stemming from automated content removal that people often have issues with the current providers but it simply makes no sense to set yourself up for a politically motivated hack and do nothing to prevent it... it's pretty crazy.

user-the-name 5y ago
Because if these people were competent, they would not be neo-nazis. This is not an ideology for thoughtful, intelligent people. So no, we can't really put politics aside. It is all part of the same whole.

t0bia_s 5y ago

I never heard about Epik before. Yet, my personal email (that I don't even use for web login) is there. How?