Leaked documents originating from the Pentagon have recently been posted across social media related to Ukraine’s war effort, the leak having originated from the popular gaming chat application ‘Discord.’ The images then spread to 4chan, with a set of doctored images being spread further across Telegram and Twitter depicting Ukrainian losses drastically higher than in the original. Estimates of around 30 or more images were found to have been spread, including C.I.A files labeled as Top Secret.

A Discord user by the name of ‘Lucca’ was singled out as one of the persons spreading the leaks, stating that he had spread hundreds of files across the application throughout the year. It is likely, according to a Bellingcat article, that the original leak spread from a tight-knit 20-member Discord server under the name ‘Thug Shaker Central,’ being a reference to a series of memes spread on the internet most commonly popular with members of the alt-right. The server administrator, who remains anonymous, is claimed by members of the server to have been responsible for the leaks. Bellingact, however, could not identify if these claims were spurious or not, the server seemingly deleted them. Member-lists were provided to the group did prove that those giving testimony were, in fact, members of the server.

Aric Toler, author of the aforementioned article, disagrees in saying that Russia was likely the source of the leaks as claimed by Reuters, stating on Twitter that “… the ‘three U.S. officials’ in this article are likely either lying or way behind on tracking the leak. From talking with the folks who were watching the leaked files come in over the last handful of months, there’s no way Russia was behind this.” The edit of one of the photos spread across pro-Russia telegrams, he says, can now serve as a critical piece to pin the information breach on Russia.

The New York Times reports that Biden Administration officials are looking to scrub Twitter of these leaks, though the efficacy of such a plan is highly questionable.