LulzSec vs Murdoch

Image from:

http://www.wirefresh.com/the-sun-newspaper-website-hacked-by-lulzsec/

According to the Hanson glossary: Citizen journalism is journalism created by people other than profession journalists, often distributed over the internet. (pg 605) An example of citizen journalism can be seen in the recent blog updates about the LulzSec "cyber terrorism group" who have successfully hacked systems of conglomerate companies such as Sony and News Corp. Recently, a blogger by the username of Hamada87 published an article about LulzSec's hacking of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid 'the Sun'.

LulzSec hacked The Sun's website and changed the home page cover story to expose a fabricated story about the 'sudden death' of Rupert Murdoch. The fake story suggested that Murdoch died after ingesting large quantities of a chemical called palladium. The aftermath of this event resulted in Murdoch shutting down the website until the company could enable a more effective security system.
Some implications of this event were that people across the country were exposed to how unsecured our data is in government/private hands. A handful of communal hackers were able to break into a best-selling website's database and publish a fake a story about someone as powerful as Rupert Murdoch being found dead. Among many negative connotations, this incident encourages people to doubt how reliable their news sources are.


Hanson, Ralph E. Mass Communication: Living In A Media World. 3rd Ed. Washington: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 2011.

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Lulzsec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec Web. 28 July 2011.