Anonymous Claims to Leak Data on the Texas GOP

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 organization.

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 criticized 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 organization 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 organizations including the Republican Party of Texas.”

That September leak spilled a reported “decade’s worth” of Epik’s data to the web—some 180GB of domain purchases and transfers, account credentials, emails, and more. It was followed by another, subsequent leak on Sept. 30, dubbed the “The/b/Sides,” which reportedly contained bootable disk images of Epik’s servers.

This latest, GOP-related leak was announced in a recent “press release” posted on 4chan: “Bet you thought it was over, didn’t you? HA! HA!” the statement reads. In the release, the group 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.”