Irish newspaper hack motivated by coverage
By Paul Smithson
13/09/2011
The editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper has suggested the recent hacking of the publication's website was probably carried out by a young person who disagreed with featured articles.
Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Garry O'Sullivan said he would much rather the hacker had got in contact and explained which issues were troubling them, rather than opt for a cyber attack.
He noted that pieces on the Vatican and Taoiseach Enda Kenny may have provoked the situation, adding: "We have been running a lot of inside stories on the church lately. I think (that it was motivated by recent coverage), I really do."
On Sunday September 11th, IT system management professionals found the Irish Catholic homepage had been replaced with a message saying the site had been hacked.
The attacker urged the organisation to look after its data better and criticised Catholicism, labelling the religion "false hope".
According to The Register, what made the cyber threat slightly unusual was that it went on to lambast the administrator of the website by name.
Aidan Murphy was told to get his act together; with the cyber criminal suggesting it was not smart to host several large sites on one server. The hacker signed off as NoNameHere.
