Vichan crisis
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| > | Vichan has reached its end of life. many of us have lost interest in the project, and the current direction of the internet has not been good for imageboards, whether its ID verification laws, big social media companies killing competition, or Google being hostile towards smaller sites. There are other imageboard engines out there but even if you use them, these are still issues you will need to think about if you start an imageboard or UGC website. You can still install or fork vichan, but do so at your own risk. | < |
| Angeleno[1] | ||
The Vichan crisis is a currently-ongoing event taking place within the Soysphere; more specifically, splinters without frequent attention to Vichan. The crisis began with leaked screenshots posted on the Shemmy by a (currently unknown) hacker detailing his ability to shut down splinters that use Vichan, planning on shutting down the Shemmy first. The hacker notably called out Swedishwin.com as a target for another attack, however, they stated they had no plans at that moment for when he would start. Before the first threats were created, subsequently spread, and made aware of, the hacker would start by presumably getting all the info they could, and then killing all moderation on the Shemmy by changing configurations to allow for major board spam and locking all janitors out of their accounts. After this, they started spamming DNB and other adjacent things. Due to the developer being asleep at the time, and the owner not having access to the server, the website would stay up for an additional 7 hours before they forced a total shutdown of the website. This would throw the various splinters still using Vichan into a panic, resulting in down time for many, and more unusual measures, such as cloudflare-level blocking on the mod.php pages, for some.
Sequence of Events[edit | edit source]
Shemmy Leaks[edit | edit source]
On July 6, 2026, close to 10am UTC, an unidentifiable hacker leaked screenshots of the Shemmy's admin interface. Shemmy users would believe that this was just some rogue janny, but they would be disproven soon enough, through the hacker publicly stating what they did.[2] Information about the hack would quickly be spread to a number of splinters, primarily ones mentioned by the hacker(pretty much only the Swinny). Here are a collection of the screenshots the hacker leaked below.
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Admin Feedback list -
Admin's Cloak and censored IP address -
The first image posted by the hacker; user manage page. -
List of all janny notes written. -
Shemmy Admin post on /j/
At first, users were skeptical that this hacker would do anything to actually shut down the Shemmy, seeing as he hadn't already done it despite his immense control, although this would later be found to be caused by the developer being asleep and not being able to just shut it down. Even though the hacker leaked mod notes, all mod accounts, and some of /j/, they refused to leak anyone's IP, showing they had some morality. Speculation around the identity of the hacker would form soon enough, with posters on the Shemmy and Swinny trying to see if it was a Sharty user, an obsessed SoyBooru cuckhold, or someone in Quote's cabal, with answers being inconclusive to this day.
However, current evidence DOES point to someone in Quote's cabal being the most likely answer, for they have had a history of targeting splinters no matter how brimmy or gemmy they might be(except ones under Quotecord control/influence like the Zarty and the Chaddy), have worked with their own version of Vichan for years now, and desire more traffic both to the imageboard and 'ru while using soyop techniques like banning mentions of splinters on the Sharty. Albeit, it could very well be some embittered soyposter who doesn't have allegiance to any website and hacks for an unknown purpose. More information on this history can be found here: Limeade leak
Shemmy Shutdown & Reaction[edit | edit source]
Hours before the threats were made and spread, the hacker would shut down Shemmy moderation to prevent anyone from deleting anything, approving any new IPs, and began to exhaust the website with incredible amounts of spam. The hacker was joined by an 3rd party DNB spammer while all of this was happening, making the long wait until shutdown worse. A janitor even spammed repeating text saying "STOP POSTING DNB NIGGER" in response to the DNB spam.[3] After some time of constant spamming, the website was forced to shut down completely until it switched to eirinchan, the imageboard software of the Banty, that got the Shemmy hacked in it's first day running on it. This event was noticed by a Manager on the Swinny, who had been monitoring the situation occurring on the Shemmy, and he contacted the rest of the Swinny staff to warn of the "dire situation" that befell the Swinny. Users were informed in an unrelated thread of the shutdown, and soon enough, a /q/ thread would be created for active users to read up on the event.
Swinny Shutdown[edit | edit source]
As promised, the Swinny shut down on the evening of July 6th (UTC). The decision was approved of by Carl XVI Gustaf (the Swinny's admin) and most jannies, recognizing the website was likely the next big target on the hacker's list. All activity held on the Swinny was transferred to a bunker thread on the Swinny's pseudo-sister website, The Nutty, where developers and staff kept up communications with Swedes on updates.[4] While the Swinny was shut down, the developer team was forced into actual activity such as converting all of the Vichan code to JSchan for added security, working on converting old posts to the new engine, and bringing the website back up very quickly to prevent the death of the website.[5] The conversion to JSChan will be used to safely continue development on the Swinny's own imageboard engine: "SwedeChan". An announcement was posted to the Swinny's Offical Telegram, if (You) cared.
Swedes would coin this event as "The Swedepocalypse."
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Swinny Manager's update to Swedes -
Developer update on JSChan conversion -
JSChan Swinny before the website is brought back
Wider Soysphere Reaction[edit | edit source]
Whether it was taken seriously at all is up for a HEAVY DEBATE, but the only core-Soysphere website that seemingly cared was the SoyBooru. As brought up in the first entry of this article, the Sharty cracks down on any mentioning of splinters outside of their control,[They just do, ok?] so the they do not know and do not care. SoyBooru users primarily used this event as fodder for shitflinging against the Swinny[6], and in some amount, the Shemmy. Wider Soysphere reactions have been small as of now.
Vichan reaching its end of life[edit | edit source]
As part of the hack aftermath, Angeleno decided to archive the Vichan repositoryποΈ[7], including a warning that people still using Vichan do so at their own risk.
Who dunnit?[edit | edit source]
No credible information has been released. If any has that hasn't already brought up within this article, be sure to update this section with it.
For now, absolutely do NOT use any Vichan imageboard without a VPN. Just because the hacker hasn't leaked IPs of anyone yet doesn't mean he won't. Stay safe, soyposters.
Snopes
- β https://github.com/vichan-devel/vichan/commit/ec2784c94893d6a3ff4a6d7766041affffdd365a
- β https://archive.is/xfJar
- β https://archive.is/OuefV
- β https://megalodon.jp/2026-0708-0041-39/https://thatsnuts.online:443/squirrel/thread/206.html
- β https://megalodon.jp/2026-0708-0043-29/https://thatsnuts.online:443/squirrel/thread/1021.html
- β https://megalodon.jp/2026-0708-0102-00/https://soybooru.com:443/forum/gen/thread/32051
- β https://github.com/vichan-devel/vichan/commit/ec2784c94893d6a3ff4a6d7766041affffdd365a
