The so-called "cesspool of the Internet" message board known as 4chan has been taken offline on Tuesday, April 15 after suffering a massive hack.
This hack reportedly exposed 4chan's source code, user data, and a ton of confidential information about the site's administrators and moderators. Several screenshots reportedly to be from 4chan's backend were circulated online. The images show the supposed backend, source code, and templates to ban users. This is the sort of thing that only site administrators and moderators would have access to.
There are also unconfirmed reports of moderator details being shared online following this hack. At least one person speaking with TechCrunch says that they believe the hacker also "obtained the personal information of 4chan Pass subscribers." These are users that pay a fee to 4chan to bypass post counters and gain access to an exclusive VIP board.
According to Bleeping Computer, a group from the Soyjak.party imageboard have claimed responsibility for the hack. The group posted images of 4chan's administration panels as well as emails for admins, moderators, and janitors (lesser mods).
One of those claiming responsibility for the hack provided some comments in a thread after 4chan was taken offline. The user goes by the handle of Chud and said the following:
Tonight has been a very special night for many of us at the soyjak party. Today, April 14, 2025, a hacker, who has been in 4cuck's system for over a year, executed the true operation soyclipse, reopening /qa/, exposing personal information of various 4cuck staff, and leaking code from the site.
In an attempt to control the damage, 4cuck admins have taken all servers offline, but there are unconfirmed reports that the servers have already been completely compromised and may not be up for some time.
In an attempt to control the damage, 4cuck admins have taken all servers offline, but there are unconfirmed reports that the servers have already been completely compromised and may not be up for some time.
While it's not stated just how the hackers breached 4chan's systems, it's speculated it had something to do with 4chan using a severely outdated version of PHP. According to user Zappit on Bluesky, the version of PHP in used by 4chan hadn't been updated since 2016. If true, this would mean that none of 4chan's current admins have updated the site's backend services or security since 4chan's founder, Christopher "moot" Poole, parted ways in 2016.
Running an old version of PHP on a website is extremely bad. PHP is often updated with security patches, just as Windows is also updated with regular security updates. Without any of those updates, there was little to stop anybody with ill intent from gaining access to a website.
The hack and shutdown of 4chan wasn't the end of things though. Another user on a different hellhole website (intentionally not named here), allegedly leaked 4chan's PHP source code.
All in all, nothing of actual value was lost today.
