Hacker group LulzSec came out of retirement last night and attacked News Corp websites as the UK hacking scandal continues to spiral out of control.
The clever chaps at LulzSec managed to hack the Sun online and re-directed users to a fake front-page where a spoof story was made up that Rupert Murdoch body was found dead at his London home.
Eventually, the re-direct was then switched to LulzSec's twitter feed where Sun reader’s were treated to tweets stating: "Oh, we forgot to mention that we sailed over to News International and wrecked them too. Nearing 300,000 followers… full steam ahead!".
Eventually the admins at News Corp took down both the Sun and The Times online to prevent the link jacking. But the damage had already been done.
The spoof news story was meanwhile posted on www.new-times.co.uk, another fake site crated by the hacking group. Which appeared to use a page from The Sun's genuine website as a template, with material dating from 14 July, leading many to speculate that LulzSec may have first breached the network last week.
As news of the attack spread overnight, it appears News International's IT staff shut down its websites, including that of The Times. At about midnight LulzSec said it was battling with The Sun website's administrators, and briefly redirected visitors again, this time to its Twitter account.
Both The Sun and The Times websites were back online this morning. A spokesman said the firm was aware of the attack on its network and declined to comment further.
LulzSec also claims to be “sitting on their [the Sun‘s] emails” and tweeted Rebekah Brooks’ email address, claiming they also know her password. Telephone numbers of Sun executives have been appearing on the new-times.co.uk/sun site which is currently unavailable due, to the volume of traffic it is getting.
LulzSec has previously hacked the websites of the CIA, the U.S. Senate, Sony Entertainment and several others. The hacker collective also seems to have brought down the official website of News International.