If there is anything that is surprising about the LulzSec story, outside of their success, is the poor quality of journalism when it comes to covering the hacking. After improperly giving LulzSec credit for breaking in to and compromising UK census data, now they are giving LulzSec credit for bringing down Australian domain registrar Distribute.it.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Earlier today, we covered how several major news outlets incorrectly reported that the leader of LulzSec was arrested. Other media organizations not only incorrectly identified the person that was arrested in the UK, but also incorrectly attributed LulzSec for breaking in to the UK governments websites. Just hours after we finished debunking that news story, some media outlets are now reporting that LulzSec hacked domain registrar Distribute.it. Like the other story we debunked, this story is also false.
The report comes from the International Business Times. It reports the following:
A report by the Register said that hacker group LulzSec took down the Distribute.IT. LulzSec over the past month has hacked Sony Corp., the U.S. Senate, an FBI affiliate, the Public Broadcasting System, gaming sites, and online porn sites.
The problem with that? LulzSec never hacked Distribute.it. If they didn’t, who did? We were aware of the Distibute.it hack earlier and know that someone else actually hacked the site. We were able to dig up one of the earlier reports of the Distribute.it hack from the Sydney Morning Herald which tells us the following:
When the hacker initially broke in, it defaced Distribute.IT’s website with the message “OWNED BY EVIL AT EFNET YOU MOTHER f****ers”. Evil is the same hacker who recently broke into the University of Sydney’s website. In that instance Evil admitted to hacking into the university from Brazil for money.
On top of that, a quick scan of the LulzSec Twitter Feed doesn’t show any mention of Distribute.IT.
So, with someone else claiming credit (namely, a hacker by the name of EVIL) and LulzSec seemingly not claiming credit for the hack, I think the report that they hacked Distribute.IT is also thoroughly debunked.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
