What’s the best outfit to wear when dismantling white supremacist websites? At a recent security conference, a hacker opted to dress as the Pink Power Ranger to take down the sites during a live, onstage presentation, News reports.
Over the past few months, hacker Martha Root has been conducting covert operations to infiltrate several hard-right, white supremacist communities and services. On “WhiteDate,” which is basically Tinder for Nazis, Root used a chatbot to covertly talk with members, accumulating private and personal information. They were also able to access the insecure backend.
“Imagine calling yourselves the ‘master race’ but forgetting to secure your own website—maybe try mastering to host WordPress before world domination,” Root wrote on OKStudipid.lol, a searchable database they created for posterity. (Private conversations, emails, and passwords were left out “for now.”)
During the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, Root then deleted WhiteDate and its contents, as well as WhiteChild, a site designed to match sperm and egg donors of specific ethnicities together, and WhiteDeal, a Fiverr-like work marketplace for racists.
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As much as the deletion event was the jewel in Root’s takedown crown, the longer-lasting effects may come from the data breach. WhiteDate, in particular, included images of users with geolocation metadata still attached, as well as their names, age, and, in some cases, extremely detailed expectations from the site and any potential partners. Having multiple children who will be homeschooled appears to be a main theme.
HaveIBeenPwnd also shows that some of the 6,000+ leaked profiles also contain the kind of hilariously revealing information you might expect on a site like this, such as claimed IQ levels, desired family structures, income levels, educational status, and astrological signs.
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The DDoSecrets organization reportedly has the datasets from each of the deleted websites. They haven’t publicly released the information, but are instead handing it out to verified journalists and researchers.
The admin of the websites deleted by Root, meanwhile, argues that it’s “cyberterrorism.”
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