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All Users Affected in Final Parler Hack, Here's What You Need to Know

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In the final days of free speech platform Parler’s existence before Big Tech wiped it from the face of the internet, a flaw in the website’s coding was exploited that could spell serious trouble for some, including many who trespassed into the U.S. Capitol last week.

Around 99.9 percent of content was compromised as part of the exploit, affecting virtually every user.

The hacker behind the massive breach, operating under the Twitter account @donk_enby according to Gizmodo, began scraping user data after the Jan. 6 incursion at the Capitol.

“I want this to be a big middle finger to those who say hacking shouldn’t be political,” the hacker told Gizmodo.

Originally setting out to catalog content posted on Jan. 6, the witch hunt expanded to include all posts on the site.

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It was discovered that files posted by users could be pulled from Parler with metadata still intact.

The metadata, embedded in pictures and videos taken by most modern cameras and cell phones, reveals information about where the photo was taken, what equipment was used to take it, and when the image was captured.

In a photo posted to Twitter, the hacker revealed that the data was so accurate, it could pinpoint the GPS coordinates of where a picture was taken.

Bad actors can easily exploit this data, which could include the exact coordinates of someone’s home (scraped from a picture of a house innocently uploaded to Parler), or information about the usual whereabouts of children.

Investigators hunting the thugs behind violence in Washington, D.C., could also use the data to pursue leads and gather evidence.

For those who trespassed inside the Capitol and caused chaos, any incriminating posts will now be virtually impossible to remove from the internet.

The hacker confirmed to Gizmodo that posts would be saved on the Internet Archive.

In total, over 56 terabytes of data have been pulled from the site and saved, regardless of whether the user was at the Capitol incursion or not. To put that in perspective, one terabyte is equal to 1,024 gigabytes.

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Did you have a Parler account before Big Tech kicked the platform off the internet?

It’s unlikely that pictures of users’ identification cards, which Parler used to verify users, were compromised in the breach since only public posts were affected.

Parler’s entire platform virtually disappeared in the wake of the Capitol incursion as Twitter, Google, and Apple all dropped the censorship hammer on the service.

Shortly after, Amazon pulled Parler from the internet by kicking it off its web servers. Parler is digging in for a fight however, and the future may see a reversal of fate for the upstart tech company.

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Jared has written more than 200 articles and assigned hundreds more since he joined The Western Journal in February 2017. He was an infantryman in the Arkansas and Georgia National Guard and is a husband, dad and aspiring farmer.
Jared has written more than 200 articles and assigned hundreds more since he joined The Western Journal in February 2017. He is a husband, dad, and aspiring farmer. He was an infantryman in the Arkansas and Georgia National Guard. If he's not with his wife and son, then he's either shooting guns or working on his motorcycle.
Location
Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Military, firearms, history




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