LulzSec is back making headlines for itself with an attack aimed at Rupert Murdoch, beleaguered boss of News Corporation. Hackers broke into into servers belonging to News International, the News Corp subsidiary that owns Murdoch's UK newspapers, and published a fake report of the media mogul's death. Masquerading as a copy of daily tabloid The Sun, the report claimed that Murdoch ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his garden and dying.
The bogus page was published on a hacked server used to host a preview of upcoming changes to another News International paper, The Times. The hackers then forced The Sun's homepage to redirect to the hacked server. The influx of traffic rapidly overwhelmed the preview server, causing it to generate errors and subsequently get taken down. The redirect currently goes to LulzSec's Twitter page. The reason for this peculiar scheme is apparently that the The Times system has been rooted; the The Sun machine has not.
Individuals affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous are also claiming to have hacked into News International's mail servers, with a press release due tomorrow. News International is, of course, being targeted in the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal that has already caused the resignation of several high-ranking executives within the Murdoch empire, and the closure of the newspaper in question.
Earlier in the day, tweets were also made purporting to be the e-mail addresses and password of various News International employees, including former Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks.
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