The official Proud Boys website was on the receiving end of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Saturday—the same day a supporter of President Donald Trump was executed by gunshot in Portland. As a result, the official website was temporarily taken down as a fraudulent site was simultaneously erected in its place. Those who compromised the official site proceeded to launch a massive SMS campaign, openly requesting recipients visit the site and release personal information of certain individuals within the Proud Boys organization.
Enrique Tarrio—the chairman of the Proud Boys organization—stated that the DDoS attack on the site occurred the very same day the URL was purchased for the fake site (theproudboys.org), suggesting that this could not have been a coincidence. Tarrio went on to say that he had always wanted to create an SMS campaign for the official Proud Boys site, where people who are interested in keeping up with the group can receive updates, but he was concerned that it would be taken down. He also mentioned that SMS campaigns are not cheap, adding that cost must be “thousands and thousands of dollars.”
The fake Proud Boys site did just that—they spent a substantial amount of money to spearhead an SMS campaign, reaching thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. Tarrio stated that it was not only liberal reporters who received the text message, but politically unaffiliated friends of Proud Boys members also received it. This suggests that the campaign was not targeting a specific political group, but a much broader group of people. It is not clear where those who set up the fake account acquired the recipient’s personal information.
Tarrio noted that the text message said something along the lines of: “BLM and Antifa are coming to your city. Protect your city now.” Beneath the message was the link to the fake Proud Boys website. It was only once someone had visited the fake site that the hosts openly requested the personal information of Proud Boys members, such as addresses and phone numbers. Tarrio had someone take a look at the specifics of the fake site, who found malware built into the site where information could be extracted.
The fake site had ported much of the information from the official site but added tenets the Proud Boys do not hold—a couple of which were pro-QAnon and anti-mescegenation sentiments. Tarrio cheekily denounced QAnon as a horoscope for Trump moms and addressed the fact that one of the Proud Boys currently serving time in prison has a black wife and mixed-race children.
But Christian, you were accused of predatory behavior toward an underage girl.
Also, are you evading a Twitter ban? Your other account, @ChrisExoo, was permanently suspended. https://t.co/t7ZFCO0870 https://t.co/NY7CH3LSgB
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) April 11, 2020
Christian Exoo, aka @AntiFashGordon & @chrisexoo, this person who says they knew you well recently tweeted this out. Did you facilitate underage drinking of students in your home? pic.twitter.com/OOzXBfxL9N
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) April 11, 2020
Tarrio pivoted to draw a comparison between what happened to his organization’s site and a doxing operation conducted by one of Antifa’s most notorious characters. He brought up the Twitter account “Antifash Gordon,” which sports more than thirty-six thousand follows on the platform. Antifash Gordon was allegedly part of an operation for a small organization called Resist Marxism, where he anonymously offered to sell T-shirts for the right-wing organization. Antifash Gordon would sell the shirts online and keep the personal information of the people ordering the products for purposes of doxing.
Antifash Gordon’s real name is Christian Exoo, who has been charged with predatory behavior toward underage girls and has had his personal Twitter account permanently suspended. The Post Millennial reported that Exoo’s roommate accused him of “racism and predatory behavior toward underage girls in real-life, betraying the feminist and anti-racist persona he carefully curated online for his tens of thousands of followers.” The outlet also documented that Exoo is in his late 30s and works as a library supervisor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
Cassandra Fairbanks of the Gateway Pundit reported that the cyber-attack on the Proud Boys “comes shortly after the Proud Boys announced that they will be rallying in Portland on September 26. This means there will be a spike in interest in the group and potential for whoever is running the fake website to collect lots of information on members of the right.”
“This is an extremely coordinated effort to spread misinformation right before the election and our return to Portland on September 26th for our End Domestic Terrorism event,” Tarrio said. “We will be protesting against Mayor Ted Wheeler and Governor Kate Brown. This feels very similar to 2018, where Proud Boys were used as a tool for the Democrats in the reelection.”
“The Democrats needed a boogeyman so they put our guys behind bars for votes. I get we’re not everyone’s cup of tea … I understand it wholeheartedly, but all we ask is that we are represented correctly. This campaign is an effort to discredit and call for violence towards our guys. We refuse to apologize for putting America first, and that is what makes us dangerous to the left. We’re hated because we’re effective and because we’re not afraid to fight back,” Tarrio concluded.
The fraudulent website was eventually taken down on August 31 after Tarrio notified authorities about the trademark violation.
—COLLIN JONES