“A McAfee security researcher Tuesday warned that a self-proclaimed Mac user had hacked and defaced two Mac fan sites for… excessive fandom,” Thomas Claburn reports for InformationWeek. “A screen shot of the hack reads, ‘This site has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been taken down for 24 hours.’ The image depicts a green Apple riddled with worms.”
“Take that, AppleMatters.com and iPhoneMatters.com. ‘This is possibly the first time a hacker is targeting Mac-related Web sites,’ said McAfee security researcher Harish Garg in a blog post on Tuesday,” Claburn reports.
“But the AppleMatters.com hack turned out to be nothing of the sort and before Tuesday came to a close, founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief Hadley Stern was doing his best to dispel the suggestion that EllisLab’s ExpressionEngine software, used to publish AppleMatters.com, might be vulnerable to attack,” Claburn reports.
“‘When I was first approached about the hoax I thought it was a little harmless fun,’ Stern said in a blog post on Tuesday,” Claburn reports. “‘I am literally shaking right now because I did not fully understand the impact of this, so lesson learnt. Again, Apple Matters, running on ExpressionEngine, was in no way hacked. It was a joke publicity stunt that I thought would be funny to attract attention.'”
Claburn reports, “An apology posted by John Casasanta, who runs the MacHeist site, which was involved with the ‘hack,’ also stressed that AppleMatters.com’s Web host and CMS software were in no way deficient. ‘We really hope that the people behind the ‘hacked’ sites, their hosting compaines, and the companies that create their content management systems aren’t looked upon negatively by you all,’ he said in a forum post. ‘The intent of everyone wasn’t malicious but just to have some fun.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: ‘Twas obviously a hoax since we — who are often held up as the poster boys for “excessive Apple fanboism” by those who don’t appreciate the truth — have long used the excellent ExpressionEngine and remained “unhacked” throughout the debacle.