LulzSec Hacks The Sun Website

Hacker group LulzSec last night hijacked the Website of News International’s The Sun newspaper, redirecting visitors to a spoof story reporting Rupert Murdoch’s suicide.

The story, hosted on new-times.co.uk, reported the 80-year-old media mogul had overdosed on palladium and died in his garden.

The resulting traffic eventually crashed new-times.co.uk and The Sun’s site then re-directed to the hacktivist’s Twitter feed instead.

Here visitors were greeted with the message: “TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our Twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!”

The group was apparently able to access News International’s system and alter The Sun‘s breaking news banner code.

The Lulzsec Twitter feed and other associated accounts also tweeted login details and mobile phone numbers of reporters and executives – including, allegedly, Rebekah Brooks. The group also claims to have stolen emails, which it said it would release on Tuesday.

News International shut down the Times’ webpages and its corporate site as a precaution but they were back online this morning.

Lulz Boat Sticks Its Oar In

Since ‘disbanding’ on 26 June Lulzsec has not claimed any ‘hacktivity’ but it seems the ‘Lulz boat’ couldn’t resist sticking its oar into the phone hacking scandal engulfing News International, whose papers it has regularly criticised. LulzSec now operates as part of the wider Anonymous hacking group.

Today, Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News International’s parent company News Corp), his son James (Chairman and CEO of News International Europe and Asia), and former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks are all due to face three hours of questioning from the culture select committee over the scandal.

The AnonymousIRC Twitter feed, associated with hacker group Anonymous, had this message for Murdoch senior: “We have joy we have fun we will mess up Murdoch’s Sun. Hi Rupert! Have fun tomorrow at the Parliament!”

Public Relations

In its first 50 days Lulzsec hacked Sony, Nintendo, the US Senate, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Arizona Police Department before announcing its retirement.

At the time the group had more than 250,000 Twitter followers, its preferred method of communication. Now it has more than 325,000.

The group garnered plenty of publicity via its Twitter feed, which it uses to announce its exploits and taunt its victims.

Inevitably this has led to increased attention from law enforcement agencies worldwide with arrests of alleged members reported in the US and the UK.

Essex teenager Ryan Cleary is currently on bail awaiting trial for computer misuse offenses relating to June’s distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) against SOCA, which Lulzsec claimed responsibility for.