Syrian hacker known only as SeCuR!TY ** DR@G0N:
We Hack this Site as a clear message that we send by the name of the great Syrian people to the Government of your country… Stop killing the Syrians because history will not forgive and will never foget [sic].
MacTalk has had a big problem with spam in the last 12 months, but now it looks like it’s got an even bigger problem with security.
I’m not linking to it directly because I think it would be very unwise to visit a site that’s been compromised like this; there’s no telling what nasties are lurking in the page. Instead I’ve linked to Pete’s imgur gallery so you can go see what’s going on without visiting the site directly.
It’s a bit sad to see our old former haunt neglected like this. Like many of our Reckoner contributors, MacTalk is where I cut my teeth writing about technology for a good long while. Of course Anthony was the founder of the site; I can’t imagine he’s very happy either.
Frankly, I think Niche Media–the owners of MacTalk–are endangering their users by leaving an obviously exploited page up (2:55pm update: the site is now down).
In terms of timing, this hack comes the day after an Apple keynote on the iPhone 5s/5c — typically the busiest week of the year for an Apple community.
Worse still, this hack has happened on the eve of their one-day conference event, MacTalk Live!
I wonder what that session on ‘network & online security’ is going to cover?
One last thing; they’ve included on their flyer the bullet point, ‘Meet the editors of MacTalk.com.au & Macworld Australia’.
Anthony, Pete & I won’t be at this event, and neither will any other former writers/podcasters of MacTalk that I know of. Even Benny Ling, the writer of the daily news & last man standing as a contracted writer by Niche Media, won’t be in attendance.
So if you’re going along specifically to catch up with the people who wrote and podcasted at MacTalk for a good long while, I would probably give it a miss.