January
27th 2010
Posted under Politics
The website for the American Conservative allegedly was hacked last night. Eric Garris says, “[Hackers] wiped out the content and replaced it with spyware.”
CHT was once hacked. It’s a shame when people seek to silence others through vandalism.
Does anyone know any details?
Pete H. on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:29 pm #
To quote “Homeless Man” in the Seinfeld episode “The Bookstore,” “The government!”
Bede on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:29 pm #
When you click on the link for the American Conservative, it takes you to the hosting company GoDaddy.
Interestingly, Rob Sanchez has a recent post about GoDaddy’s censoring certain websites.
I’m not saying that GoDaddy removed the American Conservative website, but it is noteworthy that some political blogs have changed their hosting company from GoDaddy for fear of censorship.
S.L. Toddard on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:39 pm #
It was hacked by some pro-Palestinian hacker. Before the GoDaddy thing is displayed page with a big Palestinian flag and a rant about how “you” (i.e. AmCon) should stop supporting the Jews etc etc.
S.L. Toddard on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:41 pm #
that should read “before the GoDaddy thing IT displayed etc etc”
I clicked on my AmCon fav link and up popped a screen w/black background, big Palestinian flag and an anti-Israel rant by someone for whom English was obviously not a first language.
Bede on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:54 pm #
It’s odd that someone would hack TAC for being pro-Israel. Whatever problems TAC might have had, it’s been consistently critical of Israel.
S.L. Toddard on 27 Jan 2010 at 4:55 pm #
Yeah, Bede – the hacker seemed somewhat confused.
Sean Scallon on 27 Jan 2010 at 6:20 pm #
Or the hacker is a neocon with a sense of humor
RedPhillips on 27 Jan 2010 at 6:26 pm #
When I first read this I thought it might be a White Nat ticked off about the immigration article.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if it was a pro-Palestine group that just hacked random conservative sites and didn’t know where AmCon is coming from.
RonL on 27 Jan 2010 at 6:45 pm #
Assuming that this was not done by an employee of GoDaddy, i see four possibilities since the server is running Apache/2.2.8 on Fedora.
1. Injection SQL attack opened the door.
2. someone logged in with a spyware infected client.
3. Employee sabotage
4. Easy password.
I hate malignant hackers far too much to feel shadenfreude at what amounts to misdirected friendly fire. I hope they fix this quickly and suggest that they scan any backup before loading it.
John Knez on 27 Jan 2010 at 6:55 pm #
S.L. Toddard, another possibility is that it was hacked by someone who wanted to cast pro-Palestinian causes in a bad light. Hard to say what the motivation was without more information.
Weaver on 27 Jan 2010 at 9:41 pm #
Surely that’s a false flag…
Ben on 27 Jan 2010 at 9:56 pm #
What’s up? I rarely read American Conservative anymore since Unz took over but I’m sorry to hear this…
Kirt Higdon on 27 Jan 2010 at 11:47 pm #
It’s back up.
Captainchaos on 28 Jan 2010 at 1:32 am #
Yes!
Ron Unz, Unzism, and American Decline | Conservative Heritage Times on 28 Jan 2010 at 3:37 am #
[...] email lists today teemed with angry messages about a recent article. Over at the American Conservative, Ron Unz, the neoliberal publisher of the American Conservative (since the departure of Patrick J. [...]
Attack the System » Blog Archive » Updated News Digest January 31, 2010 on 30 Jan 2010 at 1:17 pm #
[...] The American Conservative Attacked by Vandals by Bede [...]