Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/15/telegraph_romanian_defacement/

Angry Romanian hackers deface Telegraph for Top Gear toss

'Gypsies aren't Romanians, morons'

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 15th April 2010 14:21 GMT

Subdomains maintained by The Daily Telegraph website were defaced by a group of angry Romanian hackers on Thursday.

The two subdomains - shortbreaks.telegraph.co.uk and wine-and-dine.telegraph.co.uk/site/index.php - were sprayed with identical digital graffiti by the hackers from the previously unknown RNS – Romanian National Security group. Sunbelt Software reports that the group appears to be angry at the Telegraph's alleged racism against Romanians, as a translation of the defacement illustrates.

We are sick and tired of seeing how some "garbage" like you try to mock our country. [And try] to create [for us] a completely different picture compared to the real one, and calling us "romanian gypsies" [,] broadcast s****y tv programs like TopGear."

If you had the nerve to angry an entire country, know that we will not stop here! Romania.

Followed by an even clearer statement of indignation, in English

Guess What, Gypsies aren't Romanians, morons.

Both defaced pages play a folk song called The Lonely Shepard by Gheorghe Zamfir and contain links to a Top Gear clip that apparently prompted the outburst. Top Gear presenter James May is a columnist for The Telegraph.

At the time of writing on Thursday afternoon one of the sites remains defaced (shortbreaks.telegraph.co.uk) while the other was cleaned. Chris Boyd of Sunbelt Software said that neither of the attacked domains were high profile or linked to from the paper's front page. It's unclear what attack techniques and vulnerabilities were used to pull off the attack.

The Telegraph has been notified of the hack.

Screenshots of the defacement can be found in a blog post by Sunbelt Software here. ®