The last haven for “real” Qdrops, 8kun (previously called 8chan), briefly went down Sunday night after a security researcher called the head of CNServers, the anti-denial-of-service provider that controversial site uses to stay online. CNServers quickly pulled their support for the message board, resulting in a vanishingly brief outage.
The site currently runs on a web services provider in Vancouver, Washington, called VanwaTech, also known as OrcaTech. Attempts to ask the provider’s founder, Nick Lin, to take the sites down have thus far been rebuffed, and so a security researcher name Ron Guilmette contacted CNServers in Hillsboro, Oregon, telling the company that he was surprised that the small provider was protecting the site. A few minutes later, CNServers cancelled the services it provided to another internet provider, Spartan Host Ltd., essentially knocking Q offline
This kind of tangled web of service providers is common, especially in darker corners of the web. While the hosting providers involved claim they support free speech in all its forms, many of these 8kun agreements were kept secret in an effort to reduce attacks or, in this case, keep clients from knowing they supported domestic terror organisations like QAnon, the conspiracy theory that’s centered around “drops” from Q.
“These arrangements are business agreements that are confidential between two parties, and no one knows about them, unless you start asking questions,” Guilmette told Brian Krebs. “It certainly appears that a private peering arrangement was used in this instance in order to hide the direct involvement of Spartan Host in providing connectivity to VanwaTech and thus to 8kun.”
“8chan, which rebranded last year as 8kun, has been linked to white supremacism, neo-Nazism, antisemitism, multiple mass shootings, and is known for hosting child pornography. After three mass shootings in 2019 revealed the perpetrators had spread their manifestos on 8chan and even streamed their killings live there, 8chan was ostracised by one Internet provider after another,” wrote Brian Krebs.
The individual or individuals claiming to be Q moved from 4chan to 8chan/8kun and identify themselves using so-called tripcodes on the site. 8kun is only accessible via the Tor browser and is up and running as of this writing.