On Monday, PBS posted an article that rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive and living in New Zealand. However, it turned out to be a false article, placed on the website by hackers who were angered by coverage of WikiLeaks.
According to the New York Times, security experts call these attacks "reputational" on media companies who publish things that the hackers are not happy with. The companies are apparently vulnerable to these attacks because they "depend on online advertising and subscription revenue from Web sites that can be upended by the clicks of a hacker’s keyboard." The hacker can simply take away revenue from a Web site, even by just shutting it down for a few hours. Time equals money.
The attacks were "said to be motivated by a “Frontline” film about WikiLeaks that was broadcast and published online on May 24." The hackers, who are supporters of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, felt that the film had shed both the Web site and Assange in a negative light.
This hasn't been the first attack on a Web site who had been critical of something others didn't agree with. Last December, hackers shut down web sites owned by Gawker Media. Apparently, "Gawker had been critical of hacker groups like the one called Anonymous that had attacked security firms and Web sites of the Egyptian government."
So is this form of protest alright to do so? Is it okay for hackers to illegally hack a web site and shut down their revenue because of something they don't agree with?
I think there's a point when people are going to far and I believe that's what has occurred with these hackings. There's one thing of protesting something when a company commits an awful act or something of that sort. But there's another when they are just expressing their beliefs. The hackers are committing illegal acts, and although some may be funny, I just don't feel like that's the right way to go about it. Perhaps they can make their own web site and condemn what they disagree with, or they can create a protest rally. But I think the hacking has taken things a little too far.
Jackie, I heard a similar story about a group hacking a large company that I found entertaining. A software writer who goes by the name geohotz (he jailbroke the iphone) found a way to jailbreak the Playstation 3 and released the information to the internet. Sony filed a lawsuit against him for releasing programs that could unlock the PS3, and a group of hackers who were angry about this actually hacked into the Playstation Network (the online service for Playstation 3) and shut it down briefly to show they had access as a threat to Sony. Sony was so concerned about the security breach that they shut down the whole Playstation Network to rebuild the security system and it remains down to this day.
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