The latest victim of angry hackers appears to be the United States’ public broadcasting service, PBS.
Members of the hacking group LulzSec have taken credit for publishing an erroneous report on the PBS website stating that deceased rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggies Smalls were alive and living in a small New Zealand town, as well as publishing thousands of PBS email addresses and passwords to the web.
The trigger that prompted the LulzSec members to do such a thing was apparently a PBS Frontline documentary called WikiSecrets that criticized the confidential document-leaking website WikiLeaks.
“We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing,” LulzSec posted on Twitter. “Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they’re sailing next time.”
In addition, the hacker group switched out an image on PBS.org with an image that read “All your base are belong to LulzSec.”
The group’s Twitter feed also contained some new threats against Sony BMG after taking responsibility for a prior attack on the company. “We’re working on another Sony operation…it’s the beginning of the end for Sony,” stated a Tweet posted last Friday. That mission appeared to be postponed after the “success” of their PBS lulz, however. “Sony happens when Sony happens - we're celebrating our victory right now,” they tweeted Monday. “The fun will never stop!”
Despite similarities to Anonymous, LulzSec denies any association with the worldwide hacker collective, and even seems to take offense to the suggestion. I have a hunch though that we’ll be learning more about these guys over the coming months.
