According to Kiwi Farms, prior to service disruption, the forum was targeted by a “DDoS attack and other forms of attempted network intrusion.”
Kiwi Farms is a website that hosts user-generated content and discussion forums. The site has been accused of doxing, harassment, and cyberbullying. Kiwi Farms has been banned from several social media platforms and domain providers.
However, since August 26th, 2022, Kiwi Farms has been offline and displaying a note uploaded by its administrators which explains why the website is down and how they have been suffering DDoS (distributed denial of service) and other forms of cyber attacks.
The forum is down because upstream ISPs have blackholed routes to our network. When a computer tries to connect to our servers, the global network has no way to reach them. This is a deliberate action from our host. They are not answering my emails and I do not know why this has been done.
Kiwi Farms
According to Kiwi Farms, prior to service disruption, the forum was targeted by a “DDoS attack and other forms of attempted network intrusion.” The forum’s administrators believe that it was due to these malicious attacks and to protect other customers the ISP was forced to block their site.
So Why is Kiwi Farms Such a Target?
The website is known for doxxing – or publishing personal information – of people, it deems “incels” (involuntary celibates), feminists, social justice warriors, and others. Some believe the site goes out of its way to harass and humiliate people.
On August 5, 2022, Clara Sorrenti (aka Keffals), a Twitch streamer and transgender activist from Canada was swatted and arrested in London, Ontario. Days later, Keffals’ hotel address and location were leaked on Kiwi Farms.
Given the kind of content, Kiwi Farms publishes, it’s not surprising that the site would be targeted by those who don’t agree with its tactics.
Who DDoSd Kiwi Farms?
Although it is unclear who was behind the DDoS attack against Kiwi Farms, @YourAnonNews, the largest social media representative of the Anonymous movement also tweeted about the incident.
However, they told Hackread.com that at this moment there is no confirmation whether Anonymous hacktivists were behind the attack.
“However, prior to going down, we were being targeted by a DDoS attack and other forms of attempted network intrusion.”
Awwwwwwwwww. Poor Kiwifarms. Always the helpless victim.https://t.co/iiAWjiZ4e3— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 27, 2022
Kiwi Farms and Cloudflare
Cloudflare, as we know it, provides security and DDoS protection to websites. It also provides services to Kiwi Farms and since the site has been accused of doxing or publishing private information about individuals without their consent; its critics want the security firm to remove its protection.
However, at this moment there has been no statement from Cloudflare over the content Kiwi Farms has been accused of posting. Here are some of the tweets urging and pressurizing Cloudflare to “Drop Kiwi Farm” from its platform:
We’ve gotten Kiwifarms to trend for three days. Cloudflare doesn’t care how many suicides the website they support causes, but they do care if this becomes a PR nightmare that hurts their bottom line. Please get #CloudflareProtectsTerrorists and #DropKiwifarms to trend.— keffals #DropKiwifarms (@keffals) August 22, 2022
Tweet from Hashtag: DropKiwifarms
“If you’re working at Cloudflare, this is what the outcome of your technical work is: You are holding up a system that is designed to, by policy, harm marginalized groups.” — @lizthegrey on @Cloudflare‘s support of KiwiFarms. https://t.co/byqydu9WVA #DropKiwifarms— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) August 25, 2022
Tweet from Hashtag: DropKiwifarms
TW: suicide
Near was the author of groundbreaking emulators: bsnes, higan, ares. They were an inspiration for many of us in the emulation scene. Last year they committed suicide after suffering from online harassment for too long.@Cloudflare, put a stop to this. #dropkiwifarms https://t.co/nnABgJJlGm— Dolphin Emulator (@Dolphin_Emu) August 22, 2022
Tweet from Hashtag: DropKiwifarms
You can find more tweets on the #DropKiwifarms here.