The website of the Australian national broadcaster ABC was hacked by a person or group that objected to its giving airtime to Geert Wilders during the Dutch politician’s recent visit Down Under. The hackers acquired and published personal data from thousands of commenters before ABC discovered the breach and shut the site down.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Below are excerpts from the accompanying ABC article:

ABC Hacked in Protest at Wilders Interview

The ABC has gone into damage control after it was discovered the website of one of its television programs was targeted in a hack that has affected thousands of viewers.

A Twitter user going by the name of Phr0zenMyst claimed ownership of the attack, framing it as a response to the ABC’s recent coverage of the visit by right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

The hacker, based overseas, said they were upset by the ABC’s decision to “[give] a platform for Geert Wilders to spread hatred”.

The hack exposed the user names, email addresses and some personal information of more than 40,000 people – viewers who had logged in and commented on the website of the 2010 program Making Australia Happy.

The ABC was forced to scramble for answers, saying the website in question was shut down as soon as the breach was detected.

It has promised to contact each of the web users exposed.

Second attack

Information security analyst Patrick Gray says there is proof the website has been attacked before.

He says passwords from today’s attack turned up on Russian hacking forums two years ago.

“I’d suggest there’s been multiple attackers who have actually gained access to this database, so I’d suggest that criminally motivated attackers had accessed it sometime in 2011,” Mr Gray said.

“But now someone with political motivations has accessed that database and published the information to make a political point.

“But I would definitely suggest that there’s not just been one attacker.”