Infamous message board 4chan taken down following major hack

4chan, an infamous online forum, was taken offline earlier today after what appears to be a significant hack and has since been loading intermittently.

Members of the Soyjak.party imageboard (also known as The Party) have since claimed to be behind the attack. They also leaked screenshots of admin panels and a list of emails allegedly belonging to 4chan admins, moderators, and janitors (less privileged mods who help moderate the forums)."

"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," one of them (using the handle Chud) said in a thread posted after 4chan was taken down.

"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 the same thread, Chud shared multiple screenshots to prove that hacker had access to 4chan's staff administration panels and maintenance tools.

These tools could provide access to any user's location and IP address, rebuild or restart any 4chan boards, access board logs, view site statistics, and manage databases using 4chan's phpMyAdmin panel.

While those who claimed the attack didn't share how they gained access to 4chan's systems, some said the forum was likely breached because it used a severely outdated PHP version from 2016, unpatched against many security vulnerabilities that could've been exploited in the attack.

​Later in the day, someone else also leaked 4chan's PHP source code on the anonymous forum Kiwi Farms (previously known as CWCki Forums).

Before publishing, 4chan was either loading in text-only mode or showing Cloudflare connection timeout errors, hinting that the forum's staff was still working on bringing it back online.

4chan has been online for over two decades, since 2003, when it was launched by Christopher Poole, known online as moot.

Over the years, the forum has been used to leak files allegedly stolen from various high-profile companies, including Microsoft, Intel, Valve, Twitch, and, most recently, Disney.