The Escapist has become the next victim of attacks perpetrated by hacking group "LulzSec", after they managed to bring the site down and apparently cause chaos for the system administrators. The group tweeted the following at 5:35GMT on Tuesday, 14th June:
We"re firing at Escapist Magazine with around 0.4% of our total ammunition. Let"s see what their admins are made of - game is on, folks.
LulzSec is quickly becoming a more well known group online, after having perpetrated attacks upon Epic Games, the US Senate, Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax, and now The Escapist, as well as other websites. The group claims that their strike against Escapist Magazine is "causing chaos for sysadmins", to directly quote their Twitter account. During the attack, they tweeted the following (in chronological order):
Okay Escapist Magazine, let"s play
a
little
game
Tango
Down
: https://t.co/Kgsq9LP *munches popcorn* wonder where the gamers are gonna run now. Note this URL links to Escapist
Magazine.
Primary
Lulz Cannon is making toast of Escapist Magazine. The real disruption ammunition is secretly causing hell for their sysadmins. umad?
We"re firing at Escapist Magazine with around 0.4% of our total ammunition. Let"s see what their admins are made of - game is on, folks.
Perhaps more worrying than their attack against Escapist Magazine is their offer of "attacks on demand", whereby they will target sites as requested by Twitter users. It may be a joke intended to frustrate those seeking to make the most of this opportunity, but it may be a genuine offer. Attempting to navigate to the Escapist Magazine website results in an error (at the time of writing, an "Object not found" error), with the issue being that "The requested URL was not found on this server". At the same time as this article was being written, @LulzSec tweeted about having attacked EVE Online, a popular MMO title. Their tweet in relation to this is as follows:
We just wiped out the login server for Eve Online, and it accidentally took their website out at the same time: https://t.co/BgRuEoA
Note that the shortened URL above links to the EVE Online website, which cannot be accessed at this current moment in time.