Hacktivist wipes white supremacist sites live at hacker conference

During a live presentation last week at the Chaos Communication Congress—an annual hacker conference in Hamburg, Germany—a pseudonymous hacker who goes by Martha Root remotely wiped three white supremacist websites. The targeted platforms were WhiteDate, a dating site described by journalist Eva Hoffmann as a Tinder for white supremacists; WhiteChild, a sperm and egg donor matching site; and WhiteDeal, a labor marketplace. All three websites were deleted in real time at the end of the talk, which Root delivered alongside journalists Eva Hoffmann and Christian Fuchs. The weekly German newspaper Die Zeit had previously published an article by Hoffmann and Fuchs about the platforms in October.

According to the talk’s abstract, Root infiltrated the platforms using AI chatbots that bypassed verification processes. The hacker scraped public data from the platforms, exposing a 100 gigabyte dataset that has since been delivered to DDoSecrets, a nonprofit collective that stores leaked datasets in the public interest. The collective, which is calling the release WhiteLeaks, is making the data available to verified journalists and researchers rather than releasing it publicly. The leaked data revealed that WhiteDate had more than 6,500 users, with a stark demographic imbalance:

• 86% of the users were men
• 14% of the users were women

Root noted that the platforms exhibited poor cybersecurity hygiene, pointing out that user images contained precise geolocation metadata that practically hands out home addresses. The leaked dataset includes user profiles containing names, pictures, descriptions, ages, locations, genders, languages, and races. Root indicated that the leak currently does not contain emails, passwords, or private conversations. Root also compared the gender ratio of the dating site to a Smurf village, noting the extreme disparity between male and female users. Commenting on the security failures, Root, a hacker, said: “Imagine calling yourselves the ‘master race’ but forgetting to secure your own website — maybe try mastering to host WordPress before world domination”

The administrator of the three websites confirmed the hack on social media, writing on X on Sunday that the act constituted cyberterrorism and vowing repercussions. The administrator also reported that Root deleted their X account before it was restored. Root, Hoffmann, and Fuchs claim to have identified the real identity of the administrator as a woman from Germany.

Why it matters

This incident demonstrates how AI-driven infiltration can dismantle extremist networks, while simultaneously exposing the poor cybersecurity hygiene often found in such groups.