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."

Comments

Re: Once upon a time

[Cryacin]

Fox? They do a good enough job of defacing themselves.

Find 'em and lock 'em up

[artor3]

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.

Re:Find 'em and lock 'em up

[Anonymous Coward]

That is how the real world works.

Re:I still found it amusing; harmless and humorous

[artor3]

Surprisingly, crimes do not become okay just because some asshole on the internet laughed at them.

Streisand Effect

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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).

You can watch the FrontLine episode here

[PhrstBrn]

You can watch the Frontline episode on PBS's website. I love how PBS publishes a lot of their TV content online.

Re: Once upon a time

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I still found it amusing; harmless and humorous

[DaveV1.0]

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.