“OG”, an American hacker, has released hundreds of confidential documents on Discord. A popular discussion platform for Internet users.
Vincent Pic for Le Point
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PWhat is the way to leak hundreds of confidential documents? “OG” chose Discord. In the case of the discovery of numerous confidential American documents, a 21-year-old American, Jack Teixeira, was arrested by the police on Friday. He is suspected of being “OG”, the hacker who leaked hundreds of confidential US intelligence documents on the social network Discord.
But what is Discord? This social platform was born in 2015. It represents the main discussion channel for Internet users, especially for those who play video games. On Discord, users can create servers. The latter, dedicated to a subject or a community, allow thousands of Internet users to interact, talk or call each other. Discord thus claims around 190 million monthly active users.
READ ALSOLeak of classified documents: a “serious” security risk, according to the Pentagon
“OG” has therefore chosen this platform to distribute the classified documents. These were published on Thug Shaker Central, a server dedicated to an American youtuber passionate about the military universe, Oxide. According to the first elements of the investigation, a member of this server would have republished some of these confidential documents on another Discord server. This is when the snaps were shared on bigger servers.
Moderation criticized
It was almost impossible for Discord to intervene when these confidential documents were published on the first server: the latter, private, only brings together about twenty people and is accessible only by invitation. Only a report from a user can attract the attention of moderation.
READ ALSO“Social networks have become weapons of war”Moderation teams are usually quite reactive when terms of use are violated. According to the latest transparency report, Discord took down just over 150,000 individual accounts and just over 33,000 servers in the last quarter of 2022. eye of the storm. Some time before the Buffalo massacre in May 2022, the terrorist had revealed his plans on a private server of the same social network.
However, Discord can play a key role in investigations. Indeed, conversations on the social network are not encrypted, so the platform can trace in detail all exchanges between users on each server. It also has access to technical information, including IP addresses, of each user.