Topline
8kun — the controversial online imageboard originally known as 8chan— which has been linked to the QAnon movement and multiple mass shootings, came back online on Monday following a brief disruption during the weekend, with help from a Russian internet firm called ‘ddos-guard’.
8kun and its former avatar 8chan have been the primary home of the QAnon conspiracy movement.
Key Facts
The platform was knocked offline on Sunday evening after the owner of Oregon-based CNServers which helped host 8kun found out that his company was helping keep QAnon online, cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported.
CNServers helped prevent 8kun from being hit with distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, a type of cyber attack that seeks to overwhelm a website’s servers taking it down in the process.
After 8kun was briefly knocked offline, the imageboard switched over to using St. Petersburg, Russia-based ddos-guard.net to protect itself from cyber-attacks.
Crucial Quote
Ireland-based Spartan Hoswhich helps host 8Kun— helped the platform come back online by connecting it to the Russian DDoS protection service. Spartan Host’s founder, Ryan McCully, told Krebs that while he doesn’t personally subscribe to the beliefs shared by QAnon or 8kun, he intends to keep them as a customer going forward. “We follow the ‘law of the land’ when deciding what we allow to be hosted with us… Just because we host something, it doesn’t say anything about who we do and don’t support, our opinions don’t come into hosted content decisions.”
Key Background
8kun, an anonymous forum, is home to the user ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ — known to followers as ‘Q’ — who is the progenitor of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. The user’s posts, known as ‘Q drops’ were first posted in late 2017 on the anonymous imageboard 4chan, and later moved to 8chan. 8chan, however, was forced offline in August 2019, after the website was linked to a mass shooting in El Paso. The El Paso gunman is thought to have published links to his manifesto on the site. 8chan was also used by the Christchurch, New Zealand, and Poway, California shooters to spread their messages. In November last year, 8chan came back online, after rebranding itself as 8kun.
Surprising Fact
According to Krebs, 8kun and a large number of QAnon-related sites are connected to the web by a single internet provider based in Vancouver, Washington called VanwaTech. VanwaTech’s owner Nick Lim has refused to stop supporting 8kun despite repeated requests and has reportedly been working with 8kun’s administrators to keep the sites online in the name of protecting free speech.
Tangent
Apart from 8kun, the Russian DDoS protection service ddos-guard.net also helps shield the official website of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the website HKLeaks, which has been used to dox pro-democracy politicians journalists and other activists in Hong Kong.
Further Reading
QAnon/8Chan Sites Briefly Knocked Offline (KrebsOnSecurity)
What Is QAnon And How Might It Impact The U.S. Election? (Forbes)
