Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1998/09/14/new_york_times_hacked/

New York Times hacked

Hacking for Girlies grumbles over paper's Mitnick coverage

By Graham Lea

Posted in On-Prem, 14th September 1998 10:51 GMT

The New York Times Website was down for around 12 hours yesterday after a hacker organisation called HFG (Hacking For Girlies) protested about the imprisonment of Kevin Mitnick, who distinguished himself by being named the world's most wanted hacker by the FBI in 1995. Mitnick has been in prison awaiting trial for three and a half years on computer-related fraud charges. His trial is now scheduled to start in January. The front page of the NYT site was adorned with three females -- widely reported as pornographic, but a visit to a mirror at www.antionline.com will show otherwise -- and was an attack on the NYT's reporting of the imprisoned hacker. There was a poem by HFG (beginning "Wether you believe it or scoff/we at HFG hate john markoff/") -- a reference to the NYT journalist who co-authored a book entitled Takedown about Mitnick in 1996, which is being made into a film by Miramax. There is some better poetry of by Emerson, Keats and Voltaire embedded in the code. The timing was deliberately arranged to correspond with the busiest time of the week for the NYT site. This is said to be the most significant hack of a major news organisation. A complaint has been made to the computer crime squad of the FBI, which is investigating. We wonder who's software is at fault here... ®