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PBS Web Sites and Databases Hacked
wiredmikey writes "Late Sunday night, hackers gained access to several areas of PBS Web servers and were able publish a fake news story on a PBS news blog. The group also published PBS internal user login information that they were able to siphon out of PBS databases. The fake story was about rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996 after being shot in Las Vegas, being been found alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand. A group going by the name of 'LulzSec' claimed responsibility for the hack, saying the attack was a protest against a PBS Frontline broadcast last week about WikiLeaks."
not any more :(
Say what we like or we'll stamp our feet and hack your site! What happened to freedom of information? Or is it just WikiLeaks approved information?
No shit... and if you're gonna deface a TV station, why not go after FOX instead of PBS?
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
Fox? They do a good enough job of defacing themselves.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It is ironic that they violated the very freedom they see as being threatened
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
These punks need to learn that there are consequences for their actions. The trolling culture on the internet today teaches kids (and man-children) that as long as you're laughing, you win, and there are never any consequences for fucking with people. A reminder of how the real world works is long overdue.
Surprisingly, crimes do not become okay just because some asshole on the internet laughed at them.
Take off the mask, Butters. We know it's you.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Bullshit. They broke into a computer network, stole and released username/password combos, and mocked the system admins as they tried to regain control of the site. They have shown a pattern of criminal behavior, attacking anyone who dares say something they don't like. They are crooks, and should be treated as such.
If they really didn't like what Frontline had to say, they could have at least made their fake story a fake-retraction of the points they had a problem with. As Frontline is probably the most accurate docunews show on american television, if they pissed off some script kiddies, chances are the script kiddies are in the wrong.
I didn't bother to watch the show because I assumed that following wikileaks closely over the years I probably already knew everything they had to say. As it is now, I am going to go watch that episode (it is Frontline Season 29, Episode 13 titled "Wikisecrets" and was posted to usenet in full 1080i about 3 days ago).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
sometimes people die, sometimes people are physically hurt, sometimes people are mentally hurt, sometimes people are financially hurt.... and sometimes a website gets scribbled on. I do think there's some king of gradation of wrongdoing, and this is not very high.. it ranks like a leak of the latest iPhone... barely... We should focus on the important stuff.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
While this is true, if someone hacked Fox we'd probably get NEW footage of an exploding van! "TERROR BITS IN AMERICA"
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
You can watch the Frontline episode on PBS's website. I love how PBS publishes a lot of their TV content online.
Yea it is no worse than burning books, or a cross on someones lawn, or painting graffiti on a synagogue. As long as no gets hurt is is all good right? I mean after all those actions do only about as much damage if any at all. I agree people are just too dang sensitive.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I disagree with you on many points here. I think Wikileaks is acting irresponsibly and that if a member of the military did leak that info I feel they are not heros but criminals. However the biggest problem I have with your post is that you are declaring Manning guilty of the action before he has had a trail. You may voice any opinion you feel is truthful about the actions but I would ask you to refrain from declaring Manning guilty. It is unfair to him as he is innocent until proven guilty.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...criticizing liars associated with a political party makes you *partisan*!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I agree with you. Just because Wikileaks is being disparaged does not justify vigilante behavior. But, for what Wikileaks has released: it is more truth than our governments release, and in my value-system I believe that is more important than national security: it is what really happened. I'll give you a concrete example, here in Canada - where I live - our government during the run-up to the Iraq war was telling us: We do not support the Iraq war. And meanwhile, they were telling the USA in private: we cannot support you publicly because of the "political climate" against the war here, however: we will do everything we can to support your invasion. Tell me, what is our government if it is not the expression of the people who gave it a mandate? Canadian CITIZENS, en-mass were against the Iraq war: yet our government made no case to support their actions and instead pulled a back-room deal with the hopes it would never surface in history. And without leaking: it never would have.
Now, moderators: if you are going to bother to mod this *anything*, consider: Informative.
Shh.
Get real.
Other than extremists like the Tea Party, and people who don't want to hear the truth unless it's slanted toward what they want to believe, people who watch the media and track news know that PBS is good at reporting things as they are. (Polls even show that people on the left thing it's conservative and people on the right think it's liberal -- do the math -- if you're pissing off both sides, you're doing something right and reporting more news that biased parties don't want to hear.)
When it gets to the point that a news organization cannot try to do a balanced report without repercussions, it's not about revolutionaries, it's spoiled children who have to have their way.
Those who deface websites give themselves a bad name. It's not like they're defending liberty or something by shutting out what someone else has to say.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I had questioned the E/I as well. From the following page: http://tv.about.com/od/frequentlyaskedquestions/f/EI_CTA1990.htm Answer: EI stands for Educational and Informational programming. It is a result of the Children's Television Act of 1990, which mandates broadcast stations to program at least three hours of educational programming a week. EI is often seen on Saturday mornings. In creating the Children's Television Act of 1990, Congress was reacting to a FCC report that recognized the role television plays in a child's development. The CTA essentially reduces the amount of commercials during children's programming, and increases the amount of education and information in each show.
He sure as hell is.
He has more courage in a few skin cells than a piece of shit like you has in an entire body.
I'd rather know: my representative is really an asshole,
Oh he is.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
PBS is a private non-profit organization. WGBH (which produces Frontline) is owned by private foundation.
Where does the government come in here?
...was my reaction to this story.
My first reaction was, "What? PBS? FrontLine? Really, guys, now you've gone too far."
But then, when I took a step back, I realized that I was portraying a double-standard. When Anonymous (or its derivatives) goes after Big-Corp, we all stand beside the hackers and shout out chants of "Yea, they're finally getting what's coming to them!" But when they attack an organization I have lots of respect for, it's only then where I feel that they've crossed a line.
But really, now that I see it, it is a double standard. When I now reflect on it all, it truly doesn't matter whether they are targeting an organization I have no respect for or one I have complete respect for. It is illegal. They are breaking the law and disrupting the business of the public. It needs to stop.
And shame on us for trying to rationalize a double standard.
Treason is defined in the constitution to prevent reactionary fools from using it as some form of blasphemy to lynch people they do not like.
Manning is no traitor. FACT.
He may have violated his contract while arguably defending the constitution he swore his life to defend. Should he be punished? Yes. the degree is to be decided hopefully in a reasonable fashion - what he may have done was far far greater than wasting his life in Iraq for a neocon wet dream. Yes, I just said they are dying OF something (like an IED, or far more likely by suicide ) but they are not dying FOR something. Most of us only die of something, few die for something and even less for something worth death.
Manning is giving some of his life for something bigger than OIL or "TEARISM".
Americans are extremely NAIVE and unsophisticated but don't admit it; too much over confidence and too little knowledge or interest frankly. Sara Palin is an example of this. Its so bad these people are no longer just voters but they are running and getting into office.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
He sure as hell is.
He has more courage in a few skin cells than a piece of shit like you has in an entire body.
Being brave is not the same as being a hero. Maybe most people would agree that Manning is very brave. However, being a hero suggests that the brave person pursues a laudable goal. Whether Manning's actions were praiseworthy is a questions on which people's opinions vary widely.
From what I've seen, the thing that might have pissed people off is that they did not portray Manning as a hero. Actually, they talked about his personal life problems before and after he started leaking data. Which to me, insinuated (intentionally, or otherwise) that the guy did what he did, not out of a sense of justice, but because his life was fucked up.
Tell you what, we will hack into your systems and give out your usernames/passwords. Then, you can tell us how it isn't serious. Right after you stop screaming for blood.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I tend to rate PBS as pretty middle of the road myself, but this reminded me of a sad case; a conservative I know, who typically calls PBS things such as "a libtard conspiracy to manipulate all the stupid people who have never held an honest job".
He's explained how all sorts of PBS shows are leftist. Clifford the Big RED Dog's a commie, of course. Any Science show with Alan Alda narrating is obviously 'socialist' too. The cap came when he explained to me how the travel and cooking shows on PBS aren't showing the real Europe, since all those socialist European states are gray hellholes the USSR destroyed when we fought over them during WW2. He explained to me how, when the Russians occupied Italy and Spain, they treated them just like Yugoslavia and Hungary. Until Reagan finally won WW2, France was a Soviet satellite state. I told him the US and USSR fought together against Germany in WW2, and he said "That's what THEY want you to believe.".
While I wrote him off after this as simply crazy, it's interesting to me how his behaviour mirrors this situation. We could definitely claim the liberal side of American politics has more sympathy for Wikileaks than the right does. So, we have the left attacking the left, if that makes any sense. When a right wing publication reports it that way, surely cognitive dissonance should make at least a few of their loyal viewers say "But that doesn't make any sense!".
I think it's pretty obvious these hackers don't have a real, coherent, political opinion of any sort, and pretty likely they are just some batch of 4 Chan inspired script kiddies doing it for the LOLs. That's plenty to explain what's going on without any conspiracy theory. But, what I don't get is why a bunch of people who can and do buy into conspiracy theories about the President's birth certificate or how hot it got around the WTC elevators don't come up with similar conspiracy theories about why they are being told the left is attacking itself instead of the right. You'd think the paranoid nutcases would be all over things like this. We have people out there who every time a video broadcast gets glitchy, think they are seeing an alien lizardman's camouflage field slipping, but they hear "Hyper-leftist terrorists are attacking the organisation we told you yesterday was hyper-leftist too", and they can't get a good conspiracy theory started out of that?
Who is John Cabal?
Yes, they gave those usernames and passwords out so OTHER could do it instead.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You're an authoritarian fool, and a tool. Manning also swore an oath to defend the Constitution, something both Democrats and Republicans have been using for a snot rag since 911. Manning unveiled government lawbreaking, corruption and deception.
They did not do this as an act of good will. They did not do this in an effort to inform others about possible security holes. They did this because Frontline presented both sides of an argument about Wikileaks and these losers didn't like people saying anything bad about their idol.