If you had visited Crikey.com.au this morning, not only would you have seen the front page replaced by a message indicating the site was hacked, but your computer might have been victim to a drive-by virus download.
This caused Crikey to issue a warning to its users not to visit its site until things were restored, and as of this afternoon, the site seems to be back to normal.
The site hack was reported by Mumbrella, although Crikey’s editor, Jason Whittaker, told Fairfax Media that while “a few bugs on the home page” and a “few old stories” might be visible on the home page, there appeared to be no “further risk” from viruses to the site’s visitors.
Even so, we visited the site with a little trepidation, and did so via a fully patched and updated Mac sporting Internet Security software, but when we were greeted with the site as per what appeared to be normal, it seemed clear that Crikey’s web masters had been weaving their magic to get things back to normal.
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Message
Heyy Admin!!
Your Site F--k!!
Security: 0.01%
Email Us: v_helsing@(deleted).ru
BOoooOOooom
H4ck3R By Caho
Good Job :).
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Given that Crikey has made no disclosure of user databases, emails or passwords being accessed, we can only assume that Crikey’s membership list hasn’t been breached along with the hack attack.
In addition, the episode must surely be making every local publication quadruple-check site security to ensure a similar episode does not occur.
Crikey says it used the Facebook and Twitter social networks to keep its readers informed of progress to fix the site.
