On Monday, imageboard site 8chan's "baphomet" subboard, an Internet destination known for hosting aggressive "doxing" posts, received a major history wipe the day after one of its users posted the personal information of a federal judge in the Silk Road case. Archived posts sent to Ars Technica contained the full mailing address, phone number, and Social Security number of Judge Katherine Forrest at the top of a "dox thread" from Sunday, February 8, that contained many other random people's personal information.

(Due to the way baphomet users frequently post and then delete sensitive information, we have relied on archive.today links to verify the following 8chan activity. The site has also disabled the ability to search through the baphomet board through its default tool.)

Forrest's details were identical to those that had been posted by anonymous darknet users in October of last year, though this time, they didn't also include any threatening messages. A follow-up post by baphomet's "Board Owner" account stated that "HW," a reference to site founder Frederick "hotwheels" Brennan, deleted "the SSN posts" and told the baphomet board founder, previously identified via an associated Twitter handle as Benjamin Biddix, to "lay low."

The same day, according to archived posts sent to Ars, baphomet's "Board Owner" announced a "doxing for hire" service due to "running low on funds," with instructions that included requests for Western Union payment. This post came days after another doxing thread contained a "Board Owner" post including a person's full information with only the Social Security number being redacted; in its place was a note that read, "selling on Tor [at the moment]."

The Twitter account associated with Benjamin Biddix has also had its history wiped; only one post remains as of press time. A Tuesday post by "Board Owner," which has since been deleted, indicated that the person behind baphomet was fleeing the United States. "I think it [sic] obvious I'm being hunted now," the post stated, before hinting at the user heading overseas to Shanghai.

We have reached out to 8chan's administrators with questions about why the baphomet board's history saw a major wipe of its full history up until this Monday and whether that had to do with the posting of a federal judge's personal details and Social Security number. We will update this report with any response.

Update: Late Thursday, 8chan founder Frederick Brennan returned Ars' e-mail and alleged that Biddix "wiped the [baphomet] board and deindexed it without any administrative help." On Sunday, February 8, Brennan said he had received "deletion requests" from users over credit card and Social Security numbers appearing on baphomet's boards, so he deleted the offending posts, then posted a warning that baphomet would be "reassigned" to a new user if Biddix himself continued to break 8chan's rules concerning illegal content. The next day, he saw most of the board's history had been wiped without receiving a direct explanation as to why.

"I was initially worried about a bug in the software, but after looking at the logs it became obvious to me that the owner of the board wiped it himself," Brennan wrote to Ars. "He claims to have been hacked, but I'm speculating that he did it just because he could."