After vanishing for ten days following a major security breach, 4chan flickered back to life on April 25th. The infamous imageboard’s return came with an official explanation for the outage: a “catastrophic” failure rooted in long-neglected technical maintenance and compounded by financial pressures, allowing attackers to exploit severely outdated software. As a direct consequence of the vulnerabilities exposed, the site confirmed the permanent removal of its /f/ (Flash) board.
Exploiting Outdated Infrastructure
The intrusion, which began on April 14th, involved a hacker using a UK IP address successfully leveraging an old Ghostscript interpreter (reportedly a 2012 version) via manipulated PDF uploads on boards like /sci/ and /tg/, according to initial analysis and 4chan’s own admission.
Ghostscript is a common software suite for processing PostScript and PDF files, often used by websites to generate image previews; running such an old version presents substantial security risks.
This exploit vector, potentially combined with outdated PHP versions, deprecated MySQL functions, and an underlying FreeBSD 10.1 operating system unsupported since 2016, granted the attackers deep access, including shell access or direct command-line control.
This wasn’t a quick smash-and-grab; one individual dubbed “Chud” allegedly claimed on the rival Soyjak.party forum – a site populated by users from 4chan’s banned /qa/ board and potentially motivated by related inter-board tensions – to have held access for over a year.
Demonstrating their level of control, hackers even posted a taunting message, “U GOT HACKED XD”, using the administrator account of site owner Hiroyuki Nishimura. This incident follows previous security issues, including a 2014 hack involving compromised moderator credentials.
Years Of Financial Strain And Stagnation
In a remarkably candid blog post titled “Still standing“ published April 26th, 4chan management admitted the core issue was “simply not updating old operating systems and code in a timely fashion”.
They pointed to “insufficient skilled man-hours available to update our code and infrastructure” and being “starved of money for years by advertisers, payment providers, and service providers who had succumbed to external pressure campaigns” as the underlying reasons.
This situation echoes owner Nishimura’s public statements dating back years; a 2016 blog post titled “Winter is Coming” lamented the site’s financial difficulties, with Nishimura stating, “I failed. I am sincerely sorry”.
The 2025 statement revealed 4chan had been running on aging servers bought second-hand by founder Christopher Poole until new hardware was finally acquired in mid-2024, a process hampered by scarce funds and vendors wary of the site’s reputation. The migration to this new infrastructure was still incomplete when the breach occurred.
Moderator Data Leaked, Flash Board Axed
The attackers exfiltrated significant amounts of data, including source code and database tables containing moderator information. Cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont assessed the damage for The Register as a “pretty comprehensive [compromise] including SQL databases, source and shell access”.
Reports, including one from Hackread which claimed to review leaked internal Discord logs, indicate around 219 volunteer moderator (“janitor”) email addresses (including confirmed .edu domains), usernames, passwords, IP addresses, and chat logs were compromised.
While initial reporting mentioned rumors of .gov emails, fueling speculation about the site’s nature, researcher Jared Holt subsequently stated the source for this specific claim was “not legit”. The leak poses serious risks to the affected volunteers; Neringa Macijauskaitė from Cybernews highlighted the potential for doxxing, targeted harassment, and follow-on attacks if passwords were reused elsewhere. An anonymous 4chan moderator apparently confirmed to TechCrunch during the outage that the leaked moderator data seemed “all real”.
Resilience Amidst Controversy
During the downtime, the breached server was decommissioned and replaced, with updated OS and software installed. PDF uploads are temporarily suspended. The most permanent casualty is the /f/ board; 4chan stated “there is no realistic way to prevent similar exploits using .swf files”.
Although Know Your Meme initially reported observing the /f/ board upon the site’s return, the official statement confirms its permanent closure. Despite the setback and the exposure of its internal weaknesses, 4chan’s administration asserted its determination, stating the volunteer team “remains united” and that “We are bringing on additional volunteer developers” to help manage the workload. The post concluded: “No matter how hard it is, we are not giving up”. Users largely reacted with relief online, celebrating the return of the unique, if troubled, online community after widespread speculation about its future.
