Yankees Web Site Gets Obscene Bronx Cheer By James Gordon Meek October 27, 2000, Friday Copyright 2000 APB Online, Inc. The Yankees may have beaten the Mets in baseball's World Series on Thursday night, but the champions' Web site got licked this morning when a hacker defaced it with a pornographic image. FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette said the bureau's cybersquad is investigating to see if federal laws were violated in the attack. Some visitors to the Yankees site this morning may have been startled by the defacement, which showed a small photograph of a naked man aiming his posterior at the viewer. Also displayed on the defaced homepage were the words "Yankees suck!!!" Celebrants caught off guard The incident apparently surprised team officials, who were up late celebrating their 4-2 victory over the Mets. The fifth game of the Series culminated at the stroke of midnight with Yankees outfielder Bernie Williams catching a ball hit by Mike Piazza of the Mets. A Yankees spokeswoman said most team officials were sleeping off the victory this morning, which evidently hampered efforts to quickly remove the offending online imagery. "We know about it," she told APBnews.com. "We're trying to get it off." 'Sophisticated' attack The Yankees Web site is hosted by Axispoint Inc. Company president Scott Powell said the hacker's successful effort to humiliate the baseball team was a "sophisticated" attack. The site itself was not penetrated, he said. Instead, a computer server at the Yankees' Internet service provider, which Powell would not name, was hacked. The computer was then commanded to redirect people browsing Yankees.com to several university computers that hosted the pornographic, anti-Yankees Web page. Powell said the defaced site replaced the official site early this morning, but was quickly discovered by a designer in charge of posting a story about the championship game. The problem was corrected by 9:30 a.m., he said, and system engineers and FBI agents began tracing the hacker's footsteps. Powell would not say where the computer security holes were specifically located, but he admitted that it was an unpleasant headache following an otherwise joyous World Series celebration for many New Yorkers. "It's embarrassing," he said. James Gordon Meek is an APBnews.com editor. --- Support our Sponsor ------------------------------------ Imagine a credit card with a 0% introductory APR on purchases (for complete pricing information and important terms and conditions, please click on the link below). Apply now for an Aria Visa! http://click.topica.com/aaaaIjb1dhr0b1uN1Ic/Aria ------------------------------------------------------------ -- archive: http://theMezz.com/cybercrime/archive unsubscribe: cybercrime-alerts [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] url: http://theMezz.com/alerts ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
