Computer hackers with a grudge against McDonalds have used a subtle hacking technique to embarrass the burger chain online.

Activists redirected surfers visiting McDonalds.co.uk to an insecure box in a US university on which they placed a message mocking McDonalds.

The hacker, who called himself Fluffy Bunny, put up a Web site containing a parody of the burger chain's home page on the false site. A copy of the message can be seen on defacement mirror site Alldas.de here.

The prank was performed not by hacking into the server hosting the McDonalds site, but by exploiting its domain name servers.

According to Fredrik of Alldas.de: "What Fluffy Bunny did was own the nameserver of mcdonalds.co.uk with the new BIND bug, and then redirect the domain for one day or something to an insecure computer where they had their message."

He added: "This is just a big scam from Fluffy bunny. The real computer was never touched; the hacked computer was the nameserver for McDonalds UK."

Ironically in the light of recent hack attacks targeting IIS, the unwitting host to the diatribe against Big Macs was using Linux, whereas the real McDonalds site runs Microsoft IIS 4. Which goes to show you're only as secure as your weakest link. ®