Members of the hacker collective Anonymous claim to have leaked a large cache of data belonging to the Republican Party of Texas. The leak, the size of which is unclear, is said to include the “private documents” of the organisation.
According to the hackers, those documents are part of the trove of data that was recently stolen from Epik, the controversial web registrar that has often been criticised for its hosting of far-right groups and individuals.
When reached for comment on Monday, the Texas GOP confirmed to Gizmodo that it was a user of Epik’s platform. The organisation further stated that it had reported the incident to federal law enforcement officials:
“This incident has been reported to the FBI and is currently under investigation. The reported leak of information stems from a September 13, 2021 attack on Epik, the website hosting provider that was being used by numerous organisations including the Republican Party of Texas.”
That September leak spilled a reported “decade’s worth of data” to the web — some 180GB of domain purchases and transfers, account credentials, emails, and more.
This latest alleged leak was announced in a “press release” put out by the individuals claiming to be part of Anonymous: “Bet you thought it was over, didn’t you? HA! HA!” the statement says, which was published via 4chan. The group further claims that the Republicans’ data cache contains “private documents, database, draft articles that didn’t make the narrative cut, dank memes (?), and only Raptor Jesus knows what else.”
Relevantly, the Texas Republican Party’s website was recently hacked and defaced by members of Anonymous, after the state passed its controversial anti-abortion law.
Gizmodo has not independently verified the GOP data. However, the Daily Dot’s Mikael Thalen has said that he was able to verify that the cache contains “sensitive info including the names, phone numbers, and addresses of volunteers, donors, and job applicants.”