A hacktivist deleted three white supremacist websites in real time during a public talk at a major hacker conference in Germany last week, leaving the sites offline days later and prompting accusations of cyberterrorism from their administrator.
The pseudonymous hacker, who uses the name Martha Root, carried out the deletions onstage at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg. Dressed as the Pink Ranger from the Power Rangers, Root remotely wiped the servers hosting WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal at the conclusion of the presentation.
Onstage Demonstration And Targeted Sites
Root appeared alongside journalists Eva Hoffmann and Christian Fuchs, who had previously reported on the websites for the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit in October.
As of publication, all three websites remain offline. Hoffmann described WhiteDate as a dating platform aimed at white supremacists, WhiteChild as a site that claimed to connect users seeking white sperm and egg donors, and WhiteDeal as a labor marketplace catering to racist users.
The administrator of the sites confirmed the deletions on social media, posting on X that the live takedown amounted to cyberterrorism and stating that repercussions would follow. The administrator also claimed their X account had been deleted before later being restored.
Data Scraping And Security Claims
Root said they scraped publicly accessible data from WhiteDate prior to deleting the servers and later published that data online. According to Root, the site displayed weak security practices, including user images that contained precise geolocation metadata.
The leaked dataset includes user profiles with names, photographs, descriptions, ages, locations, gender, language, race, and other self-submitted information. Root said the dataset does not currently include email addresses, passwords, or private messages.
Based on the data published by Root, WhiteDate had more than 6,500 users, with roughly 86% identified as men and 14% as women.
Root said access to the sites was gained using AI chatbots that bypassed verification processes and were accepted as white users, a claim referenced in the conference talk’s abstract.
Dataset Handed To Leak Archive
The nonprofit collective DDoSecrets said it received files and user information from all three websites. The group labeled the collection “WhiteLeaks” and said it would not release the data publicly. Instead, it is asking verified journalists and researchers to request access to the roughly 100GB dataset.
Featured image credits: needpix
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