‘Hack on hoster Freedom Hosting II hits large number of Tor sites’

Sites hosted by Freedom Hosting II, a hosting party for sites on the Tor network, have been unreachable since Friday. They display a statement from ‘Anonymous’, stating that the organization has been hacked because it is said to host a lot of child pornography.

The announcement, which can be read on the Freedom Hosting II sites, states that ‘more than fifty percent of the files on the server consist of child pornography’, which would be in violation of the hoster’s own policy. Those responsible for the hack, who claim to represent Anonymous, further write that they are distributing 74GB of stolen files and a database of 2.3GB via a torrent. At first they asked 0.1 bitcoin for the data, as The Verge noted, but they have since dropped this requirement.

Researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis left on Friday via Twitter that an earlier scan revealed that Freedom Hosting II was responsible for hosting “twenty percent of all websites on the dark web.” She was able to map the sites because they shared an ssh fingerprint. In total it would be 10,613 sites. Lewis told The Verge that the move is “a big blow, because many sites were personal or political blogs and forums.” As a result of the action, ‘a lot of diversity has disappeared from the dark web’.

A similar incident occurred in 2011, when Anonymous claimed to have taken down Freedom Hosting’s servers with a DDO in connection with hosting child pornography. In 2013, the owner of the company in Ireland was arrested by the FBI. Freedom Hosting II is the successor to the original organization.

The message that can be seen on the sites