Technique T0151.012: Image Board Platform

Summary: 4chan and 8chan are examples of Image Board Platforms.

Image Board Platforms provide individual boards on which users can start threads related to the board’s topic. For example, 4chan’s /pol/ board provides a space for users to talk about politics.

Most Image Board Platforms allow users to post without creating an account. Posts are typically made anonymously, although users can choose to post under a pseudonym.
Belongs to tactic stage: TA07

Incident	Descriptions given for this incident
I00102 Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board	On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board. Although both of these attacks may seem different, since they targeted worshippers of different faiths, both shooters were united by the same fascist ideology. They were also both radicalized in the same place: 8chan’s /pol/ board. This has been corroborated by posts on the board itself, where “anons,” as the posters call themselves, recirculated the shooter’s since-deleted post. In it, the alleged shooter claims to have been “lurking” on the site for a year and a half. He includes a link to a livestream of his rampage — which thankfully does not appear to have worked — and he also includes a pastebin link to his manifesto. The very first response to his announcement was another anon cheering him on and telling him to “get the high score,” AKA, kill a huge number of people. Before carrying out a mass shooting, the shooter posted a thread to 8chan’s /pol/ board. The post directed users to a variety of different platforms (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms); a Facebook account on which the shooter attempted to livestream the shooting (T0146: Account Asset, T0151.001: Social Media Platform); and a manifesto they had written hosted on pastebin (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0152.005: Paste Platform, T0115: Post Content) and uploaded to the file sharing platform Mediafire (T0152.010: File Hosting Platform, T0085.004: Develop Document). The report looks deeper into 8chan’s /pol/ board: 8chan is a large website, which includes a number of different discussion groups about everything from anime to left-wing politics. /pol/ is one particularly active board on the website, and it is best described as a gathering place for extremely online neo-Nazis. [...] I’ve browsed /pol/ on an almost daily basis since the Christchurch shooting. It has not been difficult to find calls for violence. On Monday, March 25 of this year, I ran across evidence of anons translating the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto into other languages in an attempt to inspire more shootings across the globe. This tactic can work, and today’s shooting is proof. The Poway Synagogue shooter directly cited the Christchurch shooter as his inspiration, saying he decided to carry out his attack roughly two weeks after that shooting. On /pol/, many anons refer to the Christchurch shooter, Brenton Tarrant, as “Saint Tarrant,” complete with medieval-inspired iconography. Manifestos posted to 8chan are translated and reshared by other platform users (T0101: Create Localised Content, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0084.004: Appropriate Content). When I began looking through /pol/ right after the Poway Synagogue shooting, I came across several claims that the shootings had been a “false flag” aimed at making the message board look bad. When Bellingcat tweeted out a warning about shitposting and the shooter’s manifesto, in the immediate wake of the attack, probable anons even commented on the Tweet in an attempt to deny that a channer had been behind the attack. This is a recognizable pattern that occurs in the wake of any crimes committed by members of the board. While the initial response to the Christchurch shooter’s massacre thread was riotous glee, in the days after the shooting many anons began to claim the attack had been a false flag. This actually sparked significant division and debate between the members of /pol/. In the below image, a user mocks other anons for being unable to “believe something in your favor is real.” Another anon responds, “As the evidence comes out, its [sic] quite clear that this was a false flag.” In his manifesto, the Poway Synagogue shooter even weighed in on this debate, accusing other anons who called the Christchurch and Tree of Life Synagogue shootings “false flags” to merely have been scared: “They can’t fathom that there are brave White men alive who have the willpower and courage it takes to say, ‘Fuck my life—I’m willing to sacrifice everything for the benefit of my race.’” Platform users deny that their platform has been used by mass shooters to publish their manifestos (T0129.006: Deny Involvement).
I00104 Macron Campaign Hit With “Massive and Coordinated” Hacking Attack	A massive trove of documents purporting to contain thousands of emails and other files from the [2017 presidential] campaign of Emmanuel Macron—the French centrist candidate squaring off against right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen—was posted on the internet Friday afternoon. The Macron campaign says that at least some of the documents are fake. The document dump came just over a day before voting is set to begin in the final round of the election and mere hours before candidates are legally required to stop campaigning. At about 2:35 p.m. ET, a post appeared on the 4chan online message board announcing the leak. The documents appear to include emails, internal memos, and screenshots of purported banking records. “In this pastebin are links to torrents of emails between Macron, his team and other officials, politicians as well as original documents and photos,” the anonymous 4chan poster wrote. “This was passed on to me today so now I am giving it to you, the people. The leak is massvie and released in the hopes that the human search engine here will be able to start sifting through the contents and figure out exactly what we have here.” The Macron campaign issued a statement Friday night saying it was the victim of a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack. That campaign said the leak included some fake documents that were intended “to sow doubt and misinformation.” Actors posted a to 4chan a link (T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms) to text content hosted on pastebin (T0152.005: Paste Platform, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0115: Post Content), which contained links to download stolen and fabricated documents.

Incident

Descriptions given for this incident

I00102 Ignore The Poway Synagogue Shooter’s Manifesto: Pay Attention To 8chan’s /pol/ Board

On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board.

Although both of these attacks may seem different, since they targeted worshippers of different faiths, both shooters were united by the same fascist ideology. They were also both radicalized in the same place: 8chan’s /pol/ board.

This has been corroborated by posts on the board itself, where “anons,” as the posters call themselves, recirculated the shooter’s since-deleted post. In it, the alleged shooter claims to have been “lurking” on the site for a year and a half. He includes a link to a livestream of his rampage — which thankfully does not appear to have worked — and he also includes a pastebin link to his manifesto.

The very first response to his announcement was another anon cheering him on and telling him to “get the high score,” AKA, kill a huge number of people.

Before carrying out a mass shooting, the shooter posted a thread to 8chan’s /pol/ board. The post directed users to a variety of different platforms (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms); a Facebook account on which the shooter attempted to livestream the shooting (T0146: Account Asset, T0151.001: Social Media Platform); and a manifesto they had written hosted on pastebin (T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0152.005: Paste Platform, T0115: Post Content) and uploaded to the file sharing platform Mediafire (T0152.010: File Hosting Platform, T0085.004: Develop Document).

The report looks deeper into 8chan’s /pol/ board:

8chan is a large website, which includes a number of different discussion groups about everything from anime to left-wing politics. /pol/ is one particularly active board on the website, and it is best described as a gathering place for extremely online neo-Nazis.

[...]

I’ve browsed /pol/ on an almost daily basis since the Christchurch shooting. It has not been difficult to find calls for violence. On Monday, March 25 of this year, I ran across evidence of anons translating the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto into other languages in an attempt to inspire more shootings across the globe.

This tactic can work, and today’s shooting is proof. The Poway Synagogue shooter directly cited the Christchurch shooter as his inspiration, saying he decided to carry out his attack roughly two weeks after that shooting. On /pol/, many anons refer to the Christchurch shooter, Brenton Tarrant, as “Saint Tarrant,” complete with medieval-inspired iconography.

Manifestos posted to 8chan are translated and reshared by other platform users (T0101: Create Localised Content, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0084.004: Appropriate Content).

When I began looking through /pol/ right after the Poway Synagogue shooting, I came across several claims that the shootings had been a “false flag” aimed at making the message board look bad.

When Bellingcat tweeted out a warning about shitposting and the shooter’s manifesto, in the immediate wake of the attack, probable anons even commented on the Tweet in an attempt to deny that a channer had been behind the attack.

This is a recognizable pattern that occurs in the wake of any crimes committed by members of the board. While the initial response to the Christchurch shooter’s massacre thread was riotous glee, in the days after the shooting many anons began to claim the attack had been a false flag. This actually sparked significant division and debate between the members of /pol/. In the below image, a user mocks other anons for being unable to “believe something in your favor is real.” Another anon responds, “As the evidence comes out, its [sic] quite clear that this was a false flag.”

In his manifesto, the Poway Synagogue shooter even weighed in on this debate, accusing other anons who called the Christchurch and Tree of Life Synagogue shootings “false flags” to merely have been scared: “They can’t fathom that there are brave White men alive who have the willpower and courage it takes to say, ‘Fuck my life—I’m willing to sacrifice everything for the benefit of my race.’”

Platform users deny that their platform has been used by mass shooters to publish their manifestos (T0129.006: Deny Involvement).

I00104 Macron Campaign Hit With “Massive and Coordinated” Hacking Attack

A massive trove of documents purporting to contain thousands of emails and other files from the [2017 presidential] campaign of Emmanuel Macron—the French centrist candidate squaring off against right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen—was posted on the internet Friday afternoon. The Macron campaign says that at least some of the documents are fake. The document dump came just over a day before voting is set to begin in the final round of the election and mere hours before candidates are legally required to stop campaigning.

At about 2:35 p.m. ET, a post appeared on the 4chan online message board announcing the leak. The documents appear to include emails, internal memos, and screenshots of purported banking records.

“In this pastebin are links to torrents of emails between Macron, his team and other officials, politicians as well as original documents and photos,” the anonymous 4chan poster wrote. “This was passed on to me today so now I am giving it to you, the people. The leak is massvie and released in the hopes that the human search engine here will be able to start sifting through the contents and figure out exactly what we have here.”

The Macron campaign issued a statement Friday night saying it was the victim of a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack. That campaign said the leak included some fake documents that were intended “to sow doubt and misinformation.”

Actors posted a to 4chan a link (T0151.012: Image Board Platform, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0115: Post Content, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms) to text content hosted on pastebin (T0152.005: Paste Platform, T0146.006: Open Access Platform, T0115: Post Content), which contained links to download stolen and fabricated documents.

Counters	Response types

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Technique T0151.012: Image Board Platform

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