Media companies reel under Web hacking trauma

PBS fought on Monday and Tuesday to restore the websites for two news programs on public television, Frontline and PBS NewsHour, which were crippled by hackers who said they were angered by coverage of WikiLeaks.

The incidents were the latest examples of what security experts call “reputational attacks” on media companies that publish material that the hackers disagree with. Such companies are particularly vulnerable to such attacks because many of them depend on online advertising and subscription revenue from Web sites that can be upended by the clicks of a hacker’s keyboard — and because unlike other targets, like government entities and defense contractors, they are less likely to have state-of-the-art security to thwart attacks.

The PBS attack was said to be motivated by a Frontline film about WikiLeaks that was broadcast and published online on May 24. Some supporters of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and Bradley Manning, a soldier who is suspected of having shared hundreds of thousands of government files with WikiLeaks, criticised the film and claimed that it portrayed the two men in a negative light.

When the anonymous hackers posted a fake news article on a PBS blog and published passwords apparently obtained from PBS servers late Sunday night, they attached complaints about the film, which was titled WikiSecrets.

Staff member at PBS said they were appalled by the hackings — which were perceived to be attempts to chill independent journalism — and, to a lesser extent, by the long delay in having the sites restored. In a telephone interview , David Fanning, the executive producer of Frontline, called the incidents a “real intrusion into the press” and said they should not be characterised as mere pranks.

“This is what repressive governments do,” he said. “This is what people who don’t want information out in the world do — they try to shut the presses.”

Fanning said Frontline included multiple points of view in WikiSecrets and provided forums for criticism of the film. Other staffers, speaking anonymously because they had not been authorised by PBS to speak on the record, did not point the finger for the hack directly at WikiLeaks, but some did suggest that it would be hypocritical for any supporters of such a group to try to tamp down on freedom of information.

From time to time, other news organisations have wound up in the bull’s-eye of hacker groups, sometimes after they have published unflattering information about those very groups.

©2011 The New York
Times News Service