THE 'Irish Catholic' newspaper believes its coverage of government tensions with the Vatican provoked a cyber attack on its website.
It is now considering contacting the gardai over a hacking incident on Sunday, which replaced text on the homepage and referred to a "false religion".
The replacement message read: "You. Got. Taken. Site off-line. "The Irish Catholic -- Ireland's biggest and best-selling Catholic newspaper since 1888 is currently hacked. We should be back shortly. Thank you for your patience. And wish you to continue believing in your false religion ... Gotta love false hope."
The hacker then told the site programmers to "watch their data" and to "get your act together".
Irish Catholic editor Garry O'Sullivan said he believes the latest incident may have been provoked by its recent coverage of the Vatican and its heated exchange with Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
"We have been running a lot of inside stories on the church lately. I think (that it was motivated by recent coverage), I really do. We are getting all of these great stories and I got an email this morning from a German newspaper asking me about (the hacking) which was really surprising. It's probably a young person with a negative attitude towards religion and pretty good at hacking. I would rather if they wrote a letter to the editor and outlined their views in a more reasoned way," he said.
Doubt if this has anything to do with the Irish Catholic's coverage of Kenny-Vatican.
ReplyDeleteSeems more like some young hacker found he could gain access to their website and wanted to show how clever he was to his friends.
Anyone who was on a mission to hack the website to express his views would have surely have left comments far more critical than the mild remarks reported here.