Hackers flood chats at California university with gory videos. ‘Could really not unsee’
A flood of gruesome videos of human and animal mutilation left in chats used by students and professors at a California university left viewers shaken, news reports say.
“There were some things on there that I just could really not unsee,” Alina Kim, who helps oversee student-run chatrooms at the University of California, Irvine, told KCAL.
“I know there were a couple instances of students who were actually hospitalized due to excessive vomiting,” Kim told KABC. “I know there’s a lot of us who lost sleep over this.”
The university said in a statement to McClatchy News that it does not manage the Discord servers that were hacked in the incident.
“However, we take seriously our commitment to protecting members of our community,” the statement read. The university also offers tips on cybersecurity and counseling services.
Students use channels on Discord, an online service which hosts voice calls, video calls and text messaging, to communicate about group projects or for social purposes, the Orange County Register said.
Kim estimated that about 3,000 people viewed the “very disturbing gore” starting around 9 p.m. Jan. 9, according to the publication.
Student moderators ultimately managed to identify and block more than 400 accounts responsible for the horrifying videos, KCAL reported.
The hackers demanded a $1,000 ransom to halt the so-called “gore raid,” which lasted about four days, Kim told the Orange County Register. No ransom was paid.
Campus police are investigating, and Kim plans to contact the FBI, KNBC reported.
Nearly 37,000 undergraduate and post-graduate students attend UC Irvine, which is about 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
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