The Times and the Sun newspapers websites, both owned by Rupert Murdoch., were hacked by the LulzSec hacking group.
The first-ever hack of a major UK website occurred last night when a group targeted News International websites The Times and the Sun, directing traffic towards another page that claimed Rupert Murdoch had died.
Last night the LulzSec hacking collective claimed responsibility for the breach.
They also promised worse to come for the beleaguered newspaper group mired in the hacking scandal.
The hackers claimed to be "sitting on their [the Sun's] emails" and that they would release the emails on Tuesday. They tweeted what they claimed to be Rebekah Brooks's email address, and said they knew her password combination.
News International technicians disabled the corporate webpage and thetimes.co.uk as a precautionary measure against further embarrassing hacks.
The fake story posted on the redirect from the Sun’s homepage claimed that Rupert Murdoch, 80 had been found dead in his garden after overdosing on radioactive palladium.
LulzSec has previously targeted companies including Nintendo.
The homepage was changed after the group got into the News International system and changed the code for the breaking news banner on the Sun's site.
When the Sun page refreshed, readers were redirected to a fake page.
The site displaying the fake story crashed because of heavy traffic. Readers were then redirected to the hacker’s Twitter feed which read: “TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!”
The fake Murdoch death story claimed the mogul "ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night".
LulzSec taunted the police on Twitter: "Arrest us. We dare you. We are the unstoppable hacking generation and you are a wasted old sack of sh–, Murdoch."
LulzSec, global loose-knit hacker group in the same vein as Anonymous had announced it was disbanding last month following the arrest of alleged members.
It has targeted the US Senate, CIA, military technology contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and other government and corporate targets. Lulz is a variant of the slang term lol, (laugh out loud). LulzSec members claim they hack "for the lulz", or laughs.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the group appears to have reformed just to target News International in Britain. "Thank you for the love tonight. I know we quit, but we couldn't sit by with our wine watching this walnut-faced Murdoch clowning around," Lulzsec tweeted.
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