You’ve gotta admit: when hackers aren’t stealing our information off of the PlayStation network or stirring up unnecessary rap beef, they’re pretty funny.
This weekend, a group of hackers figured the best way to get back at the diligent journalists at PBS was to post a very convincing story claiming “Tupac Back”… but not how Rozay and ’em mean it.
Online hackers have pirated the PBS website and posted a false story claiming the rapper Tupac Shakur — who has been dead for almost 15 years — is alive and living in New Zealand.
The group — called The Lulz Boat — also posted what it said were passwords of journalists, login information for the PBS series “Frontline” and sensitive information about PBS stations.
The Lulz Boat claims it was “less than impressed” after watching the network’s program “WikiSecrets” and “decided to sail our Lulz Boat over the PBS servers for further… perusing.”
The “WikiSecrets” documentary, which aired last week on the PBS show “Frontline,” talked to U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s father and close friends.
Manning, a military intelligence analyst, is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website — one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history.
Yeah, we’re still not quite sure what the hell they were trying to accomplish either. But we’re still laughing.
Teresa Gorman, who works in social media and online engagement for the PBS program “NewsHour,” published a stream of Twitter messages Monday morning in response to comments about the fake story.
“Thanks for your concern guys – we are aware there is more than the Tupac story being hacked right now,” she tweeted.
She said she did not want to comment further to CNN.
The fake Tupac story claims the rapper was “alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand,” citing “locals.” It goes on to say a small town there — unnamed due to security risks — also housed the late rapper Biggie Smalls for years.
In addition to posting the Tupac story, The Lulz Boat also created a page — within the pbs.org address — that says “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO LULZSEC.” The title of the page is “FREE BRADLEY MANNING. (expletive) FRONTLINE!”
Oh, silly little compute geeks with too much time on their hands.
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