New York Times, Hack, Hacking for Girlies - CJR, Jan/Feb 1999http://archives.cjr.org/year/99/1/hack.asp1 of 210/29/05 7:25 PM

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January/February 1999 |ContentsOnline Journalism

After the Hack

Questions Follow the Times Attack

by Arik Hesseldahl

Hesseldahl writes frequently about Internet issues.

Within days in mid-September, the Internet demonstrated both its massivestrength and its scariest weakness. On September 11, tens of thousands of people downloaded the Starr Report from the many Web sites that made thetext available, giving the new medium a sense of critical mass. And onSeptember 13, hackers attacked the Web site of

The New York Times

, forcingeditors to pull the plug on the digital edition of the newspaper of record fornearly nine hours. Months after the hack, lingering questions remain: Whocarried it out? Why? Who's vulnerable?The apparent goal was to bring attention to the case of jailed hacker KevinMitnick, the hacker underground's favorite martyr. For more than three yearsMitnick has been awaiting trial on a twenty-five-count federal indictmentcharging him with various hacking-related crimes, from wire fraud tounauthorized access to a federal computer. His trial is scheduled to begin April20.The "Free Kevin" crowd blames the

Times

, particularly its SanFrancisco-based technology reporter John Markoff, for causing Mitnick'sarrest in 1995. Markoff's stories in the

Times

led to a book,

Takedown

, whichhe co-wrote with Tsutomu Shimomura, a California computer security expertwho helped the FBI capture Mitnick. Supporters of Mitnick think the bookexaggerates his alleged crimes. And now the book is about to become a movie,to be released in 1999 by Miramax.Early on the morning of September 13, Bernard Gwertzman, the site's editor,and Richard Meislin, editor-in-chief of New York Times Electronic MediaCo., discovered that the entry page to the

Times

site (www.nytimes.com) hadbeen replaced with a page built by HFG, for "Hacking for Girlies." This is agroup that claims to have invaded the Web sites of organizations as diverse asNASA, Motorola, and

Penthouse

magazine.People logging into the

Times

site found all this news unfit to print: a mildlyobscene HFG logo, a rambling statement attacking Markoff for putting"Kevin" in jail, and attacks on Shimomura, Matt Richtel (another

Times

techreporter), and Carolyn Meinel, a New Mexico computer security consultant