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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."
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?
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.
Agreed. I don't find it amusing at all.
Now I find it illuminating. It seems that too much effort is spent making Javascript animated menus and Flash sliding widgets and not enough effort is spent on patches, updates, and decent password policy. Corporate culture prioritizes pretty pictures to sell us more shit we don't need. Meanwhile our personal information - and therefore capacity to buy said shit - is in danger of being leaked.
From Sony to PBS and HBGary in between, too many companies are Doing It Wrong.
"Oh no... he found the
Surprisingly, crimes do not become okay just because some asshole on the internet laughed at them.
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.
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.
Corporate culture prioritizes pretty pictures to sell us more shit we don't need.
And yet, isn't PBS a non-profit?
Now I find it illuminating. It seems that too much effort is spent making Javascript animated menus and Flash sliding widgets and not enough effort is spent on patches, updates, and decent password policy. Corporate culture prioritizes pretty pictures to sell us more shit we don't need. Meanwhile our personal information - and therefore capacity to buy said shit - is in danger of being leaked.
The Javascript animated menus and Flash widgets are cheap. They're (largely) a one-time cost that is often subsidized by being the same underlying code being packaged and sold to multiple clients. Hire someone to deploy a customized CMS and voila - done.
Patching, updating, and enforcing standards is expensive. You have to hire people to constantly follow the process. Those processes take paid hours. If you're doing it right, you're hiring staff that aren't also implementing aforementioned systems serving menus and widgets. And to avoid down-time and (most) ugly surprises, it takes additional investment in infrastructure as well.
You're right in so far as organizations often get it wrong. But flashy widgets is not the reason.
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."
...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.
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.
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.