\n<\/p>\n
4chan is partly back online after a hack took the infamous image-sharing site down for nearly two weeks.<\/p>\n
The site first went down on April 14<\/a>, with the person responsible for the hack apparently leaking data including a list of moderators and \u201cjanitors\u201d (one janitor told TechCrunch they were \u201cconfident\u201d that the leaked data was real).<\/p>\n 4chan\u2019s extended disappearance led to at least one premature obituary, with journalist Ryan Broderick writing for Wired<\/a> that \u201cwhat began as a hub for internet culture and an anonymous way station for the internet\u2019s anarchic true believers devolved over the years into a fan club for mass shooters, the central node of Gamergate, and the beating heart of far-right fascism around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n But the 4chan team responded defiantly in a post on X<\/a>: \u201cWired says \u20184chan is dead.\u2019 Is that so?\u201d<\/p>\n And on Friday, the site came back online<\/a>. Shortly afterward, a post on the official 4chan blog<\/a> in said \u201ca hacker using a UK IP address\u201d was able to gain access to one of 4chan\u2019s servers using a \u201cbogus PDF upload,\u201d subsequently \u201cexfiltrating database tables and much of 4chan\u2019s source code,\u201d then beginning to \u201cvandalize 4chan at which point moderators became aware and 4chan\u2019s servers were halted, preventing further access.\u201d<\/p>\n The damage, the post said, was \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately this problem was caused by having insufficient skilled man-hours available to update our code and infrastructure, and being starved of money for years by advertisers, payment providers, and service providers who had succumbed to external pressure campaigns,\u201d the post said, later adding, \u201cAdvertisers and payment providers willing to work with 4chan are rare, and are quickly pressured by activists into cancelling their services.\u201d<\/p>\n The breached server was subsequently replaced, the post said, although the site has new limitations \u2014 PDF uploads are \u201ctemporarily\u201d disabled, and a board for sharing Flash animations has been left offline as the team saw \u201cno realistic way to prevent similar exploits using .swf files.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Sunday afternoon, the site\u2019s status checker showed that the boards and front page were up, while posting, images, and thumbnails were not working.<\/p>\n \u201c4chan is back,\u201d the post said. \u201cNo other website can replace it, or this community. No matter how hard it is, we are not giving up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n