LulzSec Target the Sun After Phone Hacking Scandal

nk497 writes "LulzSec have come out of retirement to target Rupert Murdoch's News International, hacking the website of The Sun, redirecting it first to a spoofed page reporting his death and then to Lulz's Twitter feed. 'The Sun's homepage now redirects to the Murdoch death story on the recently-owned New Times website,' the hackers said via Twitter. 'Can you spell success, gentlemen?' The hackers also started to post email addresses and passwords they claimed were from Sun staff, and said to have accessed a mail server at now-defunct News of the World."

Comments

All down

[norriefc]

AFAICT every single NI UK based website is currently offline.

Is It Wrong?

[causality]

Is it wrong that I'm amused to see this?

It's not like government was going to do anything to the corporation other than a slap-on-the-wrist fine that's certain to be less than the profits made by the act. That they may throw low-level employees under the bus doesn't change this. At least someone somewhere is trying to make sure that corporate malfeasance actually does have some kind of consequence.

I have always believed that a properly-functioning government, not owned by monied interests and willing to take effective and severe action against misbehaving corporations and their executives would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started. As I see it, they are only stepping in where the government has grotesquely failed. Everything that is bad about vigilanteism is caused by failing governments.

Re:Is It Wrong?

[Stormthirst]

Rebecca Brooks: Arrested - former News International chief executive - hardly a low level employee
Les Hinton: Arrested - chief executive of Dow Jones - again hardly a low level employee

News International's share price has dropped 6%, which whilst isn't a fine, but will certainly hammer the profits of the organisation as a whole.

You have to bear in mind, most of this is going on in England, where there isn't nearly the obvious corruption you get in American politics. There is corruption - it's government and comes with the territory - but its no where near as blatant. Even the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police have resigned, even though they had nothing to do with it, nor any knowledge of it going on.

Re:Is It Wrong?

[causality]

I don't know how things are in the U.K., but here in the U.S., if any politician so much as suggested trying this, there would be such a massive hue and cry from a huge section of the country about "Government overstepping their bounds!" and "Socialism!" that they wouldn't know what hit them.

If enforcing the law when an individual breaks it isn't socialism, then neither is enforcing the law when a corporation breaks it.

In fact you could even say it's less of an "overstep" or "socialist" when the law is enforced against corporations. I mean, supposedly we have government by the consent of the goverened, meaning individual people have a type of sovereignty that they have willingly surrendered as part of a social contract. Corporations, however, are entirely creations of the state. Since the state created them, it makes perfect sense for the state to regulate them with no need for recourse to any "social contract" type of argument.

Not that I disagree with your assessment of what would happen. The average American really has no idea what kind of vast, powerful interests are arrayed against them. Propaganda and demagoguery are their tools of choice because when the manipulations are successful, the victims think they are defending their own ideas.

IMPORTANT

[Anonymous Coward]

They got all the news international emails as well, to be posted tomorrow.

That includes wade and co.

People, this could be massive ^^

Re:Why Isn't Anyone Slagging Cell Carrier's Securi

[scubamage]

The hackers of Paris Hilton's phone weren't being employed by a massive multinational corporation to hack the phones. The people who did hack the phones saw jail time - something that will never happen to anyone who actually ordered the crimes to be committed in the case of News Corp. Until we start instituting nuremburg style trials for large corporations where there are serious consequences for malfeasance, this is going to get worse. At least in China the executives get executed when this shit happens.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[said213]

security at nintendo, sega, and eve online is now up to industry standard.
thank them for their service.

Very definitely wrong

[DaveAtFraud]

Just a historical reminder. Both the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis (before they came to power) used the same language for taking the law into their own hands. The only thing that keeps similar groups from using the same tactics to terrorize their targets and even, possibly, gain power is the rule of law. Yes, this time, the target of the vigilantes is a reprehensible dirt bag. Just remember that not all vigilantes are the good guys.

Cheers,
Dave