Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Bill Cosby Story Triggers Hacker Attack on New York Magazine Website

New York magazine Cosby cover*Hours after publishing an explosive story on Bill Cosby, New York magazine was taken down early Monday morning (July 27).

According to Quartz, a group of hackers known as VikingDom2016 took credit for the attack. Despite its claim, no confirmation has been made as to whether the group was responsible. Revealing its motivations for taking down the New York magazine website, a VikingDom2016 representative named ThreatKing tweeted the following explanation:

“Want to know a top reason? “We know one of them females in the cover.”

Although ThreatKing didn’t go into more detail regarding the comment, the person went on to allude to the website takedown being an attack on the city of New York itself.

“New york, A place where the police don’t care and people run wild with fake handguns trying to ‘troll’ and record people,” ThreatKing said, adding, “Ny mag, Is just the start.”

Quartz reports that New York magazine workers are working to get their website up and running online as they determine the exact cause of the attack. While it was understood that NYmag.com had fallen victim to hackers, a Quartz source stated that the publication is still trying to determine the specific type of attack.

Assessing what they know so far, the site offered that “ The attack seemed motivated, if nothing else, to generate maximum attention.”

“Lol, we ruined New York big night,” VikingDom2016 wrote on Twitter.

Despite the New York magazine’s official explanation of the attacking being a case of its site “experiencing technical difficulties,” the VikingDom2016 rep called the action a denial-of-service attack, which involves hackers bombarding a server with a numerous requests to take it down.

The website attack on New York magazine came after the publication ran it’s expose on Cosby on Sunday night (July 26) that included the accounts of 35 women who came forward saying they were raped by the comedian. Along with the article, titled “Cosby: The Women, An Unwelcome Sisterhood,“ New York ran a powerful black-and- white image of its cover, which featured the alleged victims and former super models Janice Dickinson and Beverly Johnson.

An excerpt of Johnson’s account from the New York magazine story is found below:

Johnson got a call from her agent saying Cosby wanted Johnson to audition for a small role on The Cosby Show. Johnson met Cosby on the set, where he invited her to come over to his house to read for a part. The first time, Johnson brought her young daughter with her. Cosby served them brunch and gave them a tour of the house. Johnson returned a second time, alone. They talked about her career and Cosby led her upstairs, under the pretense that they would rehearse. Cosby had a big espresso machine installed in the room, and he insisted Johnson have a cup. She didn’t want to argue, and took two sips. After the second, she knew she had been drugged. Cosby approached her, and put his hand on her waist. Johnson cursed him and called him out for drugging her. Cosby grabbed her arm and almost dragged her down the stairs, out of the house, and into a cab.

In addition to the release of the story, JasmineBrand.com reports that over the weekend, Cosby went through “great efforts to grill an attorney whom his camp feels purposely leaked sealed docs.”

As it worked to get its site back up, the New York magazine republished all of the women’s accounts on Tumblr, in addition to posting videos of the women on Instagram.

If VikingDom2016 is behind the website attack, it wouldn’t be the first time the group has struck online. Last year, VikingDom2016 took credit for an attack on Maine that resulted in websites for the state’s government  being down for a few hours.

When asked to provide proof that VikingDom2016 was behind the attack on New York magazine’s website, the group’s representative replied saying, “What is proof though? I just send you a picture of packets sending? That’s not really proof.

“I am not showing you my tools.”

To read the entire New York magazine cover story, click here.

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