A hacker who hates New York is claiming responsibility for taking down New York magazine‘s website last night.
NYmag.com has been offline since early Sunday when the magazine published a cover story featuring 35 women who claim comedian Bill Cosby raped them after they jockeyed for his attention in the 1960s and ’70s.
A hacker who calls himself ThreatKing says he hit NYmag.com’s website with a malicious Denial of Service (DoS) attack because he hates New York (the city).
A DoS attack occurs when a hacker floods an ISP (host) with packets (data) to interrupt service to the ISP. The packets overwhelm the ISP’s servers and interrupts service to legitimate traffic going to the host’s website.
ThreatKing says he wasn’t targeting the 35 Cosby accusers — just anything with ‘New York’ in the name.
“Many stupid people at [sic] New York,” ThreatKing told The Daily Dot over a Skype chat. “I have not even seen the cover, LOL,” he said.
ThreatKing said he recently visited NY and he was “pranked” by an African American with a fake handgun.
That’s why, he said, he “[wants] to see people die at [sic] New York.”
“I’ve seen many pranks gone wrong at new york. That got me pissed. That’s why I chose New York.”
“I’ll try my best to keep [New York] offline for 14 hours,” ThreatKing added.
ThreatKing, who works with the hacker group VikingDom, directed Daily Dot blog to a file on the group’s SoundCloud page.
There, in a recording titled “Warning Message to the United States,” a robotic voice says:
“We are going to destroy state websites, city websites, agency websites and court websites of the United States. You have took away our country and its time to get it back by destroying the United States.”
The list of potential targets includes The New York Times, the New York City FBI bureau, and New York University.
Thanks to loyal reader Ernest O. for the tip.
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Photo: NYmag.com
