Forbes Details New York Times Hack
Filed at 6:40 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- The men who claim to have masterminded an attack on The
New York Times' Web site in September said they did it because they were
bored and couldn't agree on a video to watch.
An interview in the Nov. 16 issue of Forbes magazine gives a free forum to
the two men who claimed to have hacked the Times' site and replaced it
with their own page, which insulted Times reporters and called for a
comrade's freedom.
The Times had no statement on the hack or the article. ``It wouldn't be
prudent for us to comment on this as it's still under investigation,''
said Nancy Nielsen, Times spokeswoman.
The two men, the alleged leaders of ``Hacking for Girlies,'' told Forbes
they broke into the Times' site early the morning of Sept. 13. For three
hours, Times' technicians played cat-and-mouse with the hackers before
finally pulling the plug on the site. Visitors, surfing over to the
www.nytimes.com, saw a ``page not available'' message. The site was down
for almost nine hours.
``They (Times' technicians) seemed to have no idea how we got in -- or how
to stop us,'' one of the men said.
On the page, the men slammed Times reporter John Markoff, whose book
``Takedown'' detailed the crimes and capture of Kevin Mitnick, a hacker
under indictment for 25 counts of computer and wire-fraud charges. Mitnick
has become a martyr for many in the hacking community.
The FBI is still investigating the hack.
-o-
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Received on Sun Nov 1 21:15:25 1998