The Register Hacked

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Posted by samzenpus on Sunday September 4, 2011 @08:20AM from the down-time dept.

First time accepted submitter rjmx writes "Looks like The Register has been hacked. Its front page has been replaced with a page in tasteful red and black, apparently by a Turkish hacker."

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oh shit! by larry+bagina · 2011-09-04 08:21 · Score: 5, Funny

looks like the hacker retroactively stole all their credibility!

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
1. Re:oh shit! by KiloByte · 2011-09-04 08:44 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No credibility lost, it's not them who got hacked but their DNS provider.
  
  --
  The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
2. Re:oh shit! by mickwd · 2011-09-04 09:28 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Too late: his credibility is lost :D
3. Re:oh shit! by PopeRatzo · 2011-09-04 10:56 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  So there credibility is lost. The number of businesses out there who stack everything on a $10 a year relationship is just insane.
  Oh, I see. I didn't realize that the problems was they hadn't spent enough money on their DNS services.
  Tell me, is that a new approach to network security? You just stack up piles of currency around the DNS server and then there's nothing to worry about?
  I can't think of a single reason that you shouldn't expect your DNS services to be secure, no matter how little you happen to be paying for it.
  
  --
  You are welcome on my lawn.
4. Re:oh shit! by shentino · 2011-09-04 11:13 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Your credibility is lost when your customers say it is.
  Reputation's funny that way.
5. Re:oh shit! by Xest · 2011-09-04 23:21 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  For me they didn't have any credibility to lose. I posted a response to one of Andrew Orlowski's articles the other week replying to someone that they shouldn't be surprised to see him agreeing with Murdoch as he's always had a historically right wing viewpoint.
  That evening I couldn't log in, and every post I'd ever made to The Register had been deleted.
  A site whose journalists can't even handle a post made summing up their political ideology in a polite, fair, and well sourced manner is quite comical. The worst part? my post was actually accepted by their moderator and in true Andrew Orlowski style was retroactively moderated away by him a few hours later (along with the account bad, and retroactive deletion of all my posts ever) I don't think Andrew likes it when he has to face intelligent response to his articles. None of their other bloggers... er I mean "journalists" are any more intelligent, although at least the others don't throw a hissy account banning, post deleting fit when someone disagrees with them. Of course, one might argue that it was my previous posts or something that got me a ban, and to an extent that's possibly true- not that I was trolling there, but that I often only posted to correct faults in their stories, to point out potential issues with their reasoning or to offer counter-opinions to their opinion pieces, but their readership seemed to agree with me as I had over 3000 upvotes against 1000 downvotes with even many of those downvotes stemming from engage in fanboy heavy discussions and daring to criticise some pet manufacturer's actions (cell phones, consoles etc.).
  Then on top of that it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact Andrew Orlowski was constantly attacking sites like Wikipedia complaining about the clique there denying dissenting responses, or his complaints about CRU refusing to be transparent and open. None of that would be a problem if it weren't for the fact he himself often outright refuses to let people comment on his articles, and the few times he does, he goes through the already moderated comments and removes those that point out, with evidence, why he is wrong. At that point it's just sheer hypocrisy and any validity in the points he has to make is lost on the fact he needs to sort out his own inability to ensure he follows the facts, and accept that sometimes he may have been wrong before criticising others on it.
  It's amusing too, because all I had to do to get round their ban on my account was request a new password, so it seems they're pretty technically inept too. This was made more amusing by the fact I then really did post a few troll comments to wind them up a bit, only to be banned again, to find that yep, I could still reset my password and repeated this for a few days before it got boring. I swear their admin must've been sat their thinking "How does he keep coming back?".
  As you say, credibility goes as your customers say it does. Their actions have added me to the long list of people who also believe the site is a joke. The only reason to go there is for comedy - no, not the terribly written articles - I mean BOFH. But even that seems to be rarely produced now.
  Really, The Register is like the internet's version of FUD filled trash papers like News of the World, The Daily Mail and so forth. It's written for the terminally stupid, and intelligent discussion is frowned upon and crushed with an iron fist. If you don't agree with Supreme Leader Andrew Orlowski's mad rantings and often nonsensical drivel then you are wrong.
  So excuse me if I lol a bit when I hear they've been hacked.
(c) 2005 TurkGuvenligi by Lord_Naikon · 2011-09-04 08:25 · Score: 4, Funny

Lol, why would he care about copyright? Afraid some other hacker might steal his logo?
1. Re:(c) 2005 TurkGuvenligi by godrik · 2011-09-04 08:29 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If they do that would be illegal!
Site wasn't hacked, DNS was by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-04 08:28 · Score: 3, Informative

If you saw the "hacked" page, you were being routed to a different server.
1. Re:Site wasn't hacked, DNS was by Rhodri+Mawr · 2011-09-04 08:38 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Mod parent up. This appears to be a case of DNS cache poisoning. Notably www.reghardware.com is unaffected.
Re:Slashdot needs to be hacked with Goatse. by Kiaser+Zohsay · 2011-09-04 08:37 · Score: 3, Funny

The last hacker only hacked it with OMG ponies.
Next April 1st, slashdot announces that it will accept image tags in comments. However, in preview mode all linked images will be changed to goatse. After submitting all images will be changed to Bart writing on a chalkboard "I will not post goatse images".

--
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Re:HAxorS by zonky · 2011-09-04 08:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Looks like a number of sites affected, all of them seem to be using netnames.co.uk as their registrar, looks like DNS Servers all changed.
Corrections by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · 2011-09-04 09:03 · Score: 5, Informative

If cannot live without The Register, put into your hosts file
Linux: /etc/hosts
Windows: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\host
these two lines:
72.3.246.59 theregister.co.uk
72.3.246.59 www.theregister.co.uk
And the summary of the article is apparently wrong, someone stole/hacked into TheRegister DNS zone, TheRegister www servers are intact.
1. Re:Corrections by NickFortune · 2011-09-04 10:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And the summary of the article is apparently wrong, someone stole/hacked into TheRegister DNS zone, TheRegister www servers are intact.
  
  ... which is actually kind of cool, seeing as how the Slashdot Effect seems to be wreaking it's usual havoc on the hacker's servers.
  Every now and then, reality self-organises in the direction of justice.
  
  --
  Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Re:wtf is a yumurtakabugu? by nomad63 · 2011-09-04 09:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

it means egg shell for the uninitiated ... I happen to be bilingual :) In Turkish and English...
On the technical side, I think if you are clever enough to come to /., you can check with any whois gateway to see who yumurtakabugu.com it belongs to. But I bet dollars to your pocket lint that, it is also a hacked site.

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__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
DNS hack, some ok some down still, by Rovastar · 2011-09-04 10:26 · Score: 3, Informative

Using Just-Ping to check from 50+ locations around the world only 5% have what is traditionally the correct IP (212.100.234.54 according to Netcraft) or so have the current IP most say the DNS is down.
http://just-ping.com/index.php?vh=www.theregister.co.uk&c=&s=ping!
I forced an update with Netcraft it now has a record of the another IP 68.68.20.116 with different server headers which I presume is the broken site.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.theregister.co.uk
The hackers could have done more damage if they also increased the TTL of the domains they poisoned. 24 hours seems to be the time atm.