Final Update: Lulzsec Hack of the Sun
It’s only fitting, since the Guardian were one of the few major papers involved in disseminating the Wikileaks emails and breaking the Phone Hacking scandal, that they should be the first to report a Lulzsec hack of News International:
The LulzSec collective hacked the Sun’s website and redirected it to another hacked page falsely reporting that Rupert Murdoch had been found dead.
LulzSec also claimed to be “sitting on their [the Sun’s] emails” and that they would release the emails on Tuesday. They tweeted what they claimed was Rebekah Brooks’s email address at the Sun, and said they knew her password combination.
Just in (0.30 BST): A retweet from the Editor of the Guardian says all News International sites down now
RT @jamesrbuk: Okay, www.thetimes.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, www.thesun.co.uk and thesun.co.uk all down for me now #lulzsec
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. It’s coming at them from all angles now.
Update: Sean Hoare’s Death
I go out to gym for a couple of hours, and what happens? More incredible twists and turns
The whistleblower who connected the Prime Minister’s Press officer to the Hacking Scandal in an NYT investigation has been found dead in his home in Watford (just up the road). Police are saying the death of the former NOTW journalist is ‘not suspicious’, though obviously suspicions will be high. As a friend of mine tweets
Sean Hoare’s death like Pincipal Skinner’s line from the Simpsons “There’s nothing sinister here, groundsman Willie has simply disappeared.”
As the editor of the Guardian has just tweeted, Hoare had already been interviewed under caution as a suspect in the case. Must have been tough on him, since he was also a major contributor to this article on the growing scandal only last week.
A former show-business reporter for The News of the World, Sean Hoare, who was fired in 2005, said that when he worked there, pinging cost the paper nearly $500 on each occasion. He first found out how the practice worked, he said, when he was scrambling to find someone and was told that one of the news desk editors, Greg Miskiw, could help. Mr. Miskiw asked for the person’s cellphone number, and returned later with information showing the person’s precise location in Scotland, Mr. Hoare said. Mr. Miskiw, who faces questioning by police on a separate matter, did not return calls for comment.
My guess is that he was driven to suicide by events, but of course all kinds of speculations are going to take root given the billions of dollars involved, political and business careers: what a horrible mess for him and his family.
Sean Hoare was a key figure in this scandal actually reaching the public and causing the outcry we see now: a brave man. May he Rest in Peace.