In March of 2020, we published one of our first collaborations with @UnicornRiot who report on far right and fascist groups. https://web.archive.org/web/20200325164224/https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1242850592415940612 We added screenshots of Feuerkreig Division messages to Hunter to facilitate searches. We have since documented a wide range of fascist groups in partnership with Unicorn Riot, like #PatriotFront #ProjectWhispers Identity Evropa, Proud Boys, etc. #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

On to 2020 ... we started out the year by publishing datasets from Latin America. This was personally rewarding for me, as one of my long term career goals has been to enhance the global understanding of events in Latin America. We were first to publish #Milicoleaks from Chile's military, from the hacktivist Matapacos. Matapacos was eventually rewarded by the first hacktivist bug bounty of $10,000 from Phineas Fisher: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxeykb/phineas-fisher-says-they-paid-dollar10000-bounty-to-person-who-hacked-chilean-military We also added some historical datasets like PacoLeaks, too, which were not exclusive to us. These datasets were historical precedents to 2022's massive set of releases of military and police data from the region, like #FuerzasRepresivas #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

In Dec. 2019, we added another dataset to the Banker's Box section: #29Leaks, documents and even audio of phone calls from a shop that sets up shell companies in London. We added the Sherwood data and the new data from #29Leaks to the first version of our search engine, Hunter. Hunter was named after FBI's cryptonym for HT/LINGUAL, CIA's mail opening program. https://web.archive.org/web/20191124185759/https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1198676512398028801 Hunter is a fork of the OCCRP's search engine, Aleph, built to aid journalists and researchers in following the money. We lost the public version of Hunter in 2020, to a police raid in Germany (more on that later), but we have begun rebuilding Hunter at https://hunter.ddosecrets.com, where journalists and others with a history of publishing research, can again request access to this powerful tool. #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

@bbhorne #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

Another important milestone, was the launch of the Banker's Box section. This is a section in the index for documents from banks, financial services companies, government entities dedicated to finance, etc. We exist in a world where the wealthiest can afford to hide their wealth from regulators, using tax havens and shell companies, and ever-evolving tactics for concealment. The Banker's Box section of #DDoSecrets was conceived as a place where the public could demystify these international networks of money laundering. The first Banker's Box release was Rossi, a modest couple of GBs: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Rossi_%2B_MPS The second Banker's Box release, in Nov. 2019, was 2 terabytes from the servers of the Cayman National bank on the Isle of Man: https://web.archive.org/web/20191118185935/https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1195899716653010945 We called this release Sherwood: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Sherwood #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

While we were preparing to launch our first search engine, Hunter, we passed a couple of significant milestones. First, we added the first #ransomware dataset to the archive, #Perceptics: https://web.archive.org/web/20190623084741/https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1139566745302306817 It would be a couple years before we added more ransomware datasets to the archive, and inaugurated the label "ransomware" in the index: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Perceptics We have since collected more than 1 terabyte of data from ransomware groups' websites, and made them available for public researchers to take advantage of: https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Category:Ransomware #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

One month later, #DDoSecrets announced their first Advisory Board: https://web.archive.org/web/20190623084744/https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1118538562272735232 The make-up of the board has changed a lot since then, and the board no longer hold decryption keys to "seize and transfer" the technical infrastructure of #DDoSecrets. Instead, we rely on our board for technical and operational advice. The board still offers guidance, financial accountability, weighs in on decisions, and connects us to outside partners that assist in in our goals. #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

In its first week of life, #DDoSecrets created a section for Limited Distribution datasets. If you think of DDoSecrets like a library, the LIMDIS section is the reserved books section of this library. People must have a history of publishing research, in order to access the limited distribution datasets. LIMDIS allows us to archive datasets that it would be unethical to publish torrents for, such as datasets containing a large proportion of PII, credit card data, passwords, etc. #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets

So, DDoSecrets turned four years old yesterday! #HappyAnniversaryDDoSecrets I did a talk in the summer where I reviewed what the last four years looked like for our organization, and you can watch that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjdhp9wXipk ... I want to write a version of the timeline out, too. We were founded on Dec. 3, 2018 by Emma Best and The Architect. I joined #DDoSecrets in 2019 as a member of the Advisory Board, so I wasn't involved in the day-to-day work of the publishing house, at the start.