Tupac Is Alive, PBS Hackers Proclaim
Much to the surprise of everyone who knew Tupac Shakur is dead, an article showes up on PBS’ website and stated the rapper is still alive and living in New Zealand. The article also stated that Tupac is hanging out with Biggie Smalls (another rapper who everyone knew is dead) in a small town in New Zealand, which was unnamed “due to security risks”.
This is not groundbreaking news broken by PBS, it is the doing of a hacker group known as LulzSec. They hacked PBS’ website and posted the bogus article. Sorry if you got your hopes up and you thought the defunct rappers are still alive.
LulzSec did not hack the PBS website specifically to post the bogus article. The main reason of the hacking was to get their hands on a large amount of data – MySQL root passwords, press passwords, Frontline logins, names and IP addresses of the company's servers, a map of the website's database and more. The bogus article was posted to make the breach public and to embarrass PBS. All the data that LulzSec managed to steal from PBS has been posted online
Two questions come to mind: why did LulzSec do this and how did the hacker group do it? The reason for the attack is the fact that PBS portrayed Bradley Manning in a manner that upset the hacker group. As for the second question, the hacker group stated in a post to Pastebin.com that they used a 0-day exploit in Movable Type 4 to compromise Linux servers running outdated kernels. Then they were able to further penetrate the system by compromising administrative user accounts that used the same passwords on multiple systems within PBS.
The bogus article that says Tupac and Biggie Smalls are still alive has been taken down by PBS. Google did have a chance to index it though. Below is a an image that presents the bogus article.
This is not groundbreaking news broken by PBS, it is the doing of a hacker group known as LulzSec. They hacked PBS’ website and posted the bogus article. Sorry if you got your hopes up and you thought the defunct rappers are still alive.
LulzSec did not hack the PBS website specifically to post the bogus article. The main reason of the hacking was to get their hands on a large amount of data – MySQL root passwords, press passwords, Frontline logins, names and IP addresses of the company's servers, a map of the website's database and more. The bogus article was posted to make the breach public and to embarrass PBS. All the data that LulzSec managed to steal from PBS has been posted online
Two questions come to mind: why did LulzSec do this and how did the hacker group do it? The reason for the attack is the fact that PBS portrayed Bradley Manning in a manner that upset the hacker group. As for the second question, the hacker group stated in a post to Pastebin.com that they used a 0-day exploit in Movable Type 4 to compromise Linux servers running outdated kernels. Then they were able to further penetrate the system by compromising administrative user accounts that used the same passwords on multiple systems within PBS.
The bogus article that says Tupac and Biggie Smalls are still alive has been taken down by PBS. Google did have a chance to index it though. Below is a an image that presents the bogus article.
