Cottle is based in Toronto, Canada, he is allegedly a former CSIS informant who ran 420chan where he hosted child pornography and a misogynist-racist community. He is embroiled in a bitter custody battle that involves domestic abuse claims by both his estranged wife and himself.
Cottle falsely claimed to be the founder of Anonymous in 2020 and had his claim repeated by several U.S.-based journalist acquaintances of his. The information that he founded the hacking collective known as Anonymous is 100% false.
In 2020 Cottle emerged amid U.S. Federal linked Anonymous circles who released the Blueleaks breach amid BLM protests and an uncontrolled resurgence of Anonymous. He is associated with Greg Housh aka @GregHoush and Neal Rauhauser aka @nrauhauser who are former U.S. informants.
Prior to Cottle's 2020 unveiling he connected with former U.S. felon Barret Brown alias @BarrettB of Texas and worked on the #Pursuance project. There he connected with Lorraine Murphy alias @raincoaster of Ottawa Canada who is connected to U.S. Federal linked Anonymous circles.
Epik leaks, Gab leaks, and Blueleaks were posted on @DDoSsecrets which is now suspended. Account operators include Emma Best alias @NatSecGeek, Xan Grace North alias @brazendyke, formerly @brazenqueer, of Illinois, U.S, and Lorax B. Horne alias @bbhorne of Halifax, Canada.
The aforementioned breaches were first distributed by @YourAnonNews which was created in Colorado, U.S, and subsequently handed over to a group in Chicago, Toronto, and the Netherlands. Several of the individuals mentioned in this thread have had or currently have account access.
Known account handlers of @YourAnonNews post 2017, include Gijs Eijkelboom aka @PandemicDisco
of Dordrecht, Netherlands and Michael Womack aka @Anon2World of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Also at the helm of @YourAnonNews is Cottle, who accesses it through a 3rd party app and possibly handed access to Jerry Aldrich alias @jerryaldrichiii of San Fransico, Libby Shaw alias @LibbyInPhilly of Pennsylvania, and John Jackson alias @johnjhacking of Colorado, U.S.
The operation against Epik like other similar actions is posing as the hacker group Anonymous to circumvent legal issues regarding free speech and other legal codes that have to be broken in the U.S. to dismantle targeted infrastructure and domestic extremist groups.
This means recent hits against Epik, Gab, and other breaches are likely tied to an entity, government or commercial, operating through a third party, whether it is government backed or paid through a lobby is currently unknown. @SakuraSamuraii is a good place to start.