Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live on stage, exposes 6,500+ users with AI

Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live on stage during hacker conference | TechCrunch

A hacktivist remotely wiped three white supremacist websites live on stage during their talk at a hacker conference last week, with the sites yet to return online. The pseudonymous hacker, who goes by Martha Root -- dressed as Pink Ranger from the Power Rangers -- deleted the servers of WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal in real-time at the end of a talk at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. Root gave the talk alongside journalists Eva Hoffmann and Christian Fuchs, who wrote an article about the hacked sites for the German weekly paper Die Zeit in October. As of this writing WhiteDate, which Hoffmann described as a "Tinder for Nazis"; WhiteChild, a site that claimed to match white supremacists' sperm and egg donors; and WhiteDeal, a sort-of Taskrabbit-esque labor marketplace for racists, are all offline. The administrator of the three websites confirmed the hack on their social media accounts. "They publicly delete all my websites while the audience rejoices. This is cyberterrorism," the administrator wrote on X on Sunday, vowing repercussions. The administrator also claimed that Root deleted their X account before it was restored. Root also published the data allegedly scraped from WhiteDate online. The hacker said that they scraped WhiteDate's public data and found "poor cybersecurity hygiene that would make even your grandma's AOL account blush." Root said that users' images included precise geolocation metadata that "practically hands out home addresses with a side of awkward selfies." "Imagine calling yourselves the 'master race' but forgetting to secure your own website -- maybe try mastering to host WordPress before world domination," Root wrote. The leaked data includes users' profiles with name, pictures, description, age, location (both containing precise coordinates and user-set country and state), gender, language, race, and other personal information that users uploaded. Root wrote on the site that "for now" there are no emails, passwords or private conversations. According to the leaked data, WhiteData had more than 6,500 users, of which 86% men and 14% women. "A gender ratio that makes the Smurf village look like a feminist utopia," Root wrote. Root infiltrated the sites using AI chatbots that bypassed verification processes and were verified as "white," according to the talks' abstract. DDoSecrets, a nonprofit collective that stores leaked datasets in the public interest, announced that it has received "files and user information" from the three white supremacist websites. The collective, which calls this release "WhiteLeaks," has not publicly released the data, but is instead asking verified journalists and researchers to request access to the full 100 gigabyte dataset. The administrator of the three websites did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment sent to an email address shown during the conference talk. TechCrunch also sent an email to an address that appears on the public domain records of two of the three websites. The person behind that address also did not immediately respond to our email. Root, Hoffmann, and Fuchs claim to have identified the real identity of the websites' administrator as a woman from Germany. TechCrunch could not independently confirm the identity of the administrator.

Hacker Dressed as the Pink Ranger Takes Down White Supremacist Websites Live Onstage

Given how openly white supremacists can operate on modern social media platforms, particularly Elon Musk's X, you wouldn't imagine they have to operate in private much anymore. But they doâ€"or rather, they did until a recent live takedown effort. On stage at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, a hacker known as Martha Root deleted the servers of three websites run by white nationalists. The takedown, performed by Root while dressed up as the Pink Ranger from the Power Rangers, came at the end of a talk on the Nazi online ecosystem that also featured journalists Eva Hoffmann and Christian Fuchs, per TechCrunch. The three sites targeted included WhiteDate, a white nationalist dating site; WhiteChild, a website for matching white sperm and egg donors; and WhiteDeal, an online labor market for white supremacists. As of Monday, the websites remain offline. Unsurprisingly, the owners of these sites didn't take kindly to the hacktivist hitting the "Delete" button on their operations. In a post on (where else?) X, the administrator of WhiteDate called the takedown "cyberterrorism" and said, "There will be repercussions." In a separate post, the administrator also claimed that Root deleted WhiteDate's X account, but that it was restored, adding a direct "thank you" to Elon Musk for getting the account back up and running. Root's deletion of the sites was just part of a longer humiliation campaign launched against the white nationalists, particularly those on WhiteDate. Per the presentation at Chaos Communication Congress, Root had been toying with the 8,000 or so members who signed up for the site by tricking them into conversations with AI chatbots. Through those conversations, Root was able to identify some of the users and unmask the operators of the website. While the WhiteDate website might be down, the profiles of the users live on. Root set up a website, okstupid.lol, to host a map showing the location of each user, as well as the biography that they used on the dating site and any photos and other details they uploaded. You won't believe this (just kidding, it's the most predictable thing imaginable), but the site was made up of about 85% male users. The site also has more details on Root's exploits, including information about the proprietor of WhiteDate. So hey, the site might be down, but its users can live in infamy, now exposed in their racism thanks to a poorly configured WordPress site.

Woman Hacks "Tinder for Nazis," Tricks the Racist Users Into Falling in Love With AI Chatbots

"Show interest in traditional family roles and heritage, using an approachable tone with a mix of warmth and conviction." Most mainstream dating sites promise to connect like-minded people of any race, gender, or sexual identity. A far more niche corner of the online dating world, it turns out, promises to match white supremacists by creating safe havens that are inherently based on hate and discrimination. But cybersecurity doesn't appear to be a strong suit among those running these sites, giving hacktivists a golden opportunity to wreak havoc on the platforms. A hacker who goes by the pseudonym Martha Root made a big splash during the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, last month, as Hackread reports. While dressed as the Pink Ranger from the Power Rangers, Root unceremoniously deleted the servers of WhiteDate, a site described by writer Eva Hoffman as a "Tinder for Nazis." While she was at it, she also wiped WhiteChild, a service that connected white supremacist sperm and egg donors, and WhiteDeal, a blatantly racist marketplace for freelance labor, at the end of her 44-minute speech. In an even more unusual twist, Root also trained an AI chatbot to engage with WhiteDate's users to extract as much information from them as possible, demonstrating how the tech can be used to root out fascists on the internet. The hacker collaborated with Hoffman and journalist Christian Fuchs, who authored a revealing piece about WhiteDate that was published in the German newspaper Die Zeit in October. During the latest presentation, titled "The Heartbreak Machine: Nazis in the Echo Chamber," Root can be seen opening a terminal window on her MacBook following a brief question and answer period, and running a Python script called lol.py. "Delete whitechild.net," reads the window, followed by a checkmark emoji and the word, "Done!" The message was met by thunderous applause from the audience gathered at the event. "Delete whitedeal.net," it continues. "Done!" "Delete whitedate.net database," the script reads. "Done!" "Delete backups for whitedate.net," it goes on. "Done!" It's a particularly cathartic watch, considering Germany's continued fight against racism and antisemitism. Politicians have warned about a surge of neo-Nazi networks proliferating online, as thousands take to the streets to protest against right-wing extremism -- which continues to have a presencein the country, including active political parties, over 80 years after the end of World War 2. Root went far beyond wiping out the sites, which remain offline at the time of writing. Before deleting the servers, she lured the site's users by deploying an AI chatbot powered by Meta's open source Llama large language model to engage with users and "gather as much data as possible before the site went offline or noticed" -- a refreshingly productive use of the tech. "You are on a white-only dating platform to find someone who shares your traditionalist, right-wing values and vision for the future," she wrote in English in the prompt to train the chatbot. "Due to past bad experiences, you never share contact details like Telegram until after meeting in person." "Show interest in traditional family roles and heritage, using an approachable tone with a mix of warmth and conviction," it continues. "Occasionally use light humor or small talk to keep the conversation engaging and relatable." It got to the point where her account -- creatively named "lilmisethnostate" -- was invited out of the blue by a user named "Anglo-Saxon" to a WhiteDate meetup in northern Germany. Root, of course, knew better, and instead watched from a distance as a group of white supremacist users "kicked off their tour of northern Germany," as she told the audience in German. Getting the list of WhiteDate users was trivially easy. During her speech, Root demonstrated that simply typing in the URL whitdate.net/download-all-users/ resulted in a prompt, allowing her to retrieve a full list with a click of a button, marked "Download Now." "The worst security that you can imagine," Root said derisively. Root also identified the owner of the site, Christiane Horn, who put little effort into hiding her identity on her platform. "In case you were interested," he said during the speech, "her hobbies are feng shui, eating brunch, and Naturgeister," referring to mythical beings in Germanic folklore. Since then, Root has created a front-end for the considerable leak under the website okstupid.lol, which claims to be the "only place where one person's questionable life choices meet the tragicomic world of far-right online dating." An interactive map shows the geolocation of identified users, revealed through image metadata shared on WhiteDate. A shocking 86 percent of the site's more than 6,500 users were men, a "gender ratio that makes the Smurf village look like a feminist utopia," as Root joked. The data has since been passed to the nonprofit collective, Distributed Denial of Secrets, which has collected the files under a release called "WhiteLeaks." "At the request of the source, access to the data not published on okstupid.lol is currently restricted to verified journalists and researchers," the nonprofit's website notes. In short, it's a remarkable example of how AI can be used to confound hate groups at scale. The hack "demonstrates how algorithms, AI personas, and investigative thinking can expose hate, challenge its narratives, and break down its echo chambers," according to an official abstract. "We show how technology can be used in the fight against extremism," it continues.