What is 4chan?
4chan is one of the largest English language based image boards on the open web. They have over 900k new posts per day and some 27 million active monthly users.
What makes it a unique social platform is that users can choose to remain anonymous. They don’t even need to create an account to access and engage with content on the platform. As an added security measures, posts time-out after a period so they can’t, unless found and archived by an independent data gathering source, be checked and referenced by security teams, users, or law enforcement at later date.
There is a wide range of topics hosted on the platform, from Japanese culture, to politics, to adult content. Because of the anonymity allowed, as well as a very limited moderation by the site owners, 4chan has a large amount of illicit content and activity. This activity includes cyberbullying, child pornography, harassment, violent threats, racism and extremist ideologies.
Despite this, it’s important to note that there is nothing inherently bad about the platform, just as there is nothing inherently bad about the dark web, and many of the users use it for legitimate purposes such as for its original intent which is the exploration and discussion of the Japanese film and television animation style, anime. In fact, like Reddit, many influential memes have originated from the platform such as ‘lolcats’ and ‘chocolate rain’. As such it has historically been an important driving force behind the development of internet culture.
Bottom line: 4chan is a forum, the original purpose was for the discussion of anime and Japanese culture. It’s a forum where users don’t need to have an account or sign up with a name, there is little moderation, and posts are deleted from the server after a period, as such there are few consequences. With this format, people can and do say just about anything on the platform.
How can 4chan benefit your organization as a data source?
The anonymity offered by the channel means users feel comfortable talking openly and they do so around a wide range of subject matters and people. For example, under the political forum /pol/ you can find examples of alt-right groups, threats of violence against a person, organization or group, and racist behaviour.
The range of topics discussed and the freedom with which individuals and groups openly discuss them can give security teams and law enforcement an idea of emerging trends as well as be one of the first places that death threats or threats of violence against individuals and organizations can be found. In the past, terrorist manifestos have also been posted on the channel. These discussions can indicate when an event is going to evolve into a tangible threat and give security teams a heads up to prepare and mitigate the potential threat.
Additionally, there are groups and individuals on the channel, such as the members of Anonymous who have turned their online attention, for right or wrong, to intelligence gathering on people and organizations. Often, 4chan is one of the first places they share their findings. For example, they might uncover and share personal details about a CEO such as their address, medical records and details of their family.
Why use Signal for monitoring 4chan?
One of the key problems with any form of online intelligence reconnaissance is the quantities of data you need to assess to get even the smallest tidbits of potentially useful information. 4chan has this problem in spades with over 3.5 billion posts. And these posts are transient, with the more R rated the post being the shorter it’s existence. This means relevant security intelligence on the 4chan platform might only be public for a couple of days. To gain real insights into the channel you need to be constantly and efficiently monitoring with real-time alerts.
4chan is just one of the data sources you can monitor using Signal though. You can simultaneously monitor the open, deep, and dark web including forums like Reddit and chatrooms like Telegram. Our system allows you to create tailored keyword-driven searches with boolean logic which is assisted by our machine learning and language processing AI to efficiently gain intel on hyper-relevant, new and emerging threats.
