Or so a reporter tells fellow New York Times writer Brian Stelter:

"Tired" of this whole circus? You speak for many of us this weekend, Heenes family. Many of us.

However, the Times still hates your kids and your mom.

AT&T spokesman Michael Cole sent us the following statement, saying AT&T's network was swamped with attacks from the server that hosts 4chan's infamous "/b/" forum, so AT&T blocked 4chan for a while:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

4chan itself has come under denial of service attack recently; if the site's online enemies actually managed to gain access to the site's servers (via a different type of attack), they could have used it as a proxy to hit AT&T. Or maybe someone figured out how to trick /b/'s bulletin board software into doing the same thing; lord knows the online hangout is popular with plenty of crafty script kiddies.

(Pic via)

For benefit of the uninitiated, 4chan is a popular Wild West-ish outpost of internet known equally for its infamous hacking jobs and pranks (Rickrolling emerged from this murky swamp) as its meme generation, perhaps most notably the LOLcats phenomenon. 4chan's /b/ messageboard, one of the sections of the site blocked by AT&T, was once described as "the asshole of the internet" by Gawker and Valleywag alum Nick Douglas, an outpost where "btards" gather to engage in tasteless games of uncensored oneupsmanship, where the objective is often to see who can elicit the most shock from other members of the community.

Reports Tech Central:

Users of AT&T's DSL internet access across many states in the US are reporting that they are being blocked from the infamous /b/ message board in what appears to be an act of internet censorship by the phone company. This started today Sunday and no one has yet been able to get any official confirmation out of AT&T as to why.

Moot, the founder of 4chan, has confirmed AT&T is filtering/blocking the site.

In addition to starting a war with the internet's most skilled collection of cyber-rogues, Central Gadget says that AT&T may also be breaking the law.

Under the FCC's Comcast/BitTorrent ruling, Internet Service Providers may only slow or cap connection speeds. They are not allowed to block any service or protocol on the internet. Here, 4chan as a web site appears to fall under an internet service, but it is also conforming to standard web page protocols. It appears AT&T does not have the legal right to block 4chan, only to cap customers who are "abusing" their access to the internet.

Predictably, the 4chan crowd is already mobilizing both inside and outside of their online community. AT&T didn't just open a can worms, they dove headfirst into a den of vipers, and this will be very interesting to watch play out.

AT&T Takes on 4chan—Everybody Stand Back [Tech Central]
AT&T Blocking Access to Some Parts of 4chan [Central Gadget]
pic via

Unlike with Sarah Palin's emails, there's not really a public-spirited reason to post the screenshots the hackers took, except, of course, pure voyeurism. The detail-by-detail, appointment-by-appointment depiction of the lifestyle of a rich and famous actress is all engrossing stuff for the masses (and for us). And yet it feels oddly unsatisfying — the same drip, drip, drip of minutiae that the Internet famous overshare on blogs and Twitter.

Screenshots of the shayek@mac.com email account, released by habitués of the online bulletin board 4chan, appear to be authentic. Breaking into the account was a simple matter of knowing Hayek's birthday — September 2 — and guessing at her security word (they claim it was the name of her best known movie role) to reset the account's password. Public-records searches show that the 323-area-code phone number Hayek listed in a sent email belongs to the actress. A spokeswoman for Hayek has not returned a call requesting comment.

The glimpses into Hayek's life revealed by her inbox are fascinating, even if mundane: The stranger-suckling actress has been invited to America Ferreira's 25th birthday party. She downloads a bunch of iPhone applications from the iTunes App Store — and she gets spam from Apple, just like the rest of us. As for the perks of being famous, a driver was scheduled to meet her flight arriving in Abu Dhabi. American Express has given her a new Gold card. (What, she doesn't rate the exclusive black Centurion Card?) Balenciaga and Stella McCartney deliver designer clothes to her apartment. She schedules "Japanese face massages." And she gets scans of stories about her in the celebrity weeklies.

Heroic television short-hair Rachel Maddow has been losing viewers, ever since the election! What the hell, America? Too busy watching Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior to care about public affairs? Cause that's what I'm doing. Deadliest Warrior.


Ha, the young internet idiots at 4Chan hacked Time.com's "100 Most Influential People" online poll and voted 4Chan's founder up to #1 and also, we quote, "the hackers apparently rearranged the top 21 names so that the first letter of their names-looking down the list-spelled out the phrase 'Marblecake Also the Game.'" Joke's on you, hackers. There is no way to make Time's list of Influential People any more bullshit than it already is.


More on today's Chicago Tribune layoffs, via Facebook updates:

10:45am [redeacted]: "Two people who sit at adjacent desks just got laid off. Good, good people. We're all waiting at our desks hoping not to be called next."
10:47am [redacted]: "A lot of tears..."
13 minutes ago [redacted]: "I was told to stop writing about this, because it was upsetting some people. OK, I'll stop. But this is bigger than work. This is about real people and real friends."

New-media-overtaking-old-media-symbolism-UGH.


Elsewhere in declining audiences: the Seattle P-I. They killed the print paper and went online-only, but now their online traffic is down 23% from a year ago. There's no good angle on that whatsoever.

Well, yes, in fact — everyone who doesn't click on crazy emails that claim to be from Twitter but aren't. Twitter is the latest target of a "phishing" campaign — an attempt by hackers to gather usernames and passwords through deceptive means.

Typically, the victim receives an email that directs them to a website where they're asked to log in. The website is controlled by hackers who then use the credentials to take over an account. In Spears's case, the anonymous troublemakers on 4chan's /b/ bulletin board are claiming credit.

Just one question: Why would the b-tards bother? Online banking accounts have long been a target of phishers, since there's money to be made. But there's no money in Twitter. The service, which lets users post short updates to their friends, doesn't carry advertising, and hasn't figured out a way to charge people. Like Twitter itself, this hacking stunt is good entertainment, but not a clever business.

Seen a high-profile Twitter account hacked? Send it in. We'll keep a running list.

HACKED:

Fox News

Britney Spears

Rick Sanchez, CNN anchor:

Barack Obama:

Facebook:

The Huffington Post:

The authorities won't say, but consensus has it the Tennessee college student under investigation is one David Kernell, a 20-year-old whose father, Mike Kernell, is a Democrat in the Tennessee state legislature. His email address is rubicon10@yahoo.com, which matches the name of a 4chan user — Rubico — who posted a detailed confession of the hack on the site last week. Also, whoever broke into Palin's account first changed the password to "popcorn," which could be a pun on Kernell's last name.

SCHWARTZ: A few random thoughts: 1. The question of whether the email of public servants is public or private is an interesting question. Public servants now have reason to behave as if every email might be read aloud in court. This standard might not actually be in the public interest, in the long run. It might make it harder for public servants to do their job. 2. It appears Palin used passwords that were too weak, and didn't change them often enough. Passwords should not be real words. they should include at least three digits and at least one non-alphanumeric character. Example: foo&&b@x7978. That's what a strong password should look like. 3. Weev's take:
i wish they'd done it properly
screenshots? should have archived the mailspool
and waited a few days for the logs to go away
i figure someone is going to get seriously v& for this
maybe not the person who actually did it
but someone
MOE: Uh, v&?

SCHWARTZ: What? oh. I dunno. That's what he said. I'm guessing it means "fucked by the national intelligence establishment." If you run that please be clear that he is NOT taking credit.

MOE: Pareene wrote that the /b/ hacker didn't really seem to know what he was looking for and should have probably figured that out before sharing the password with the world. Do you think this sort of demonstrates the limitations of 4chan, like, ideologically? This was maybe their chance to get mainstream attention for doing something with a potential public interest.

SCHWARTZ: All this demonstrates is that 4chan knows how to break into peoples' email accounts. 4chan has no coherent ideology ... it's more like a series of memes/trends. It might have some sort of ideology but for the fact that it doesn't have a memory. It erases itself multiple times a day. Moot can't afford to archive stuff. Server space is too expensive. So it's really hard for people to follow 4chan for a long period of time. There's no institutional memory. People drop in and drop out. It's like a mosh pit. But I do thinks it's significant that you can have 4chan and other anonymous people breaking national news.

MOE: I guess Sarah Palin is the ultimate meme generation politician.

SCHWARTZ: What do you mean?

MOE: Her absurdity lends itself naturally to Lulz. Her averageness. Her momness. To the kid who doesn't remember Ollie North or Reagan or hear in her rhetoric the echoes of the destructive Reagan-era "culture wars", she is just a clueless lady with a funny accent and a bunch of fucked up kids. And like, of course her password is something stupid, you know?

SCHWARTZ: I guess you're right. She doesn't make me that angry, either. Nor am i especially interested in why she makes others angry. I was already angry.
I've been angry for a long time

MOE: Right, and if she doesn't make us that angry, she is definitely not making 4chan angry.

SCHWARTZ: It's interesting that all these pols use Yahoo! Or that Palin does. She writes pretty long emails. Very different from say, [former Philadelphia mayor and federal probe subject] John Street. The Alaskan government seems to have a rather vital textual culture. It has yet to succumb to the shorthand of the handheld thumbwriting favored by John Street, Eliot Spitzer, etc. What her email tells me is: "I am a mom. I write real, substantial, long, single-paragraph email with sincere expressions of my feelings."

MOE: Yeah, and those are just the earnest, near universally relatable sort of positive qualities 4chan CAN'T STAND.

*Disclosure: Matt is my ex-boyfriend. So no it was not hard to score this interview.

rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652

Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.

In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.

after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…

>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727

this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll, and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo and I obliged, then it started to get big

Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things.

Ok, sad thing first: a good Samaritan reset the password and tried to alert Sarah. But he also posted the new password, causing multiple people to try to log in at once, freezing the account for 24 hours. And now, the account has been deleted! Which is, as we said, maybe destruction of evidence? So for now this is, we think, all we'll get to see from this email account (if anyone finds evidence of saved emails, let us know.)

The full timeline of events, with corroborating evidence of the legitimacy of these screengrabs, is here. Here's why it all looks convincing:

• The emails to Ivy Frye, a Palin aide who's mentioned in the earlier email stories specifically wondering how best to hide her correspondence with the governor.
• The attached contact list (below) features an email address for husband Todd Palin that is legit. As well as an apparently genuine phone number for Bristol Palin and an address for Beth Leschper, Palin's deputy communications director.
• The email from Amy McCorkell, a known associate of Palin's from Wasilla who might have the governor's personal email address.
• Emails to and from Lt Governor Sean Parnell about a local radio talk host.
• Calls to the phone number listed for Bristol Palin apparently go to her voicemail.
• The public profile for the gov.palin address dates its last update to April of this year—well before she became McCain's running mate. So if it's a hoax, it's a hoax that began long before anyone outside of Alaska cared about Palin.
• We haven't seen these family photos before. Have we?
• The previously accessible public profiles for gov.sarah@yahoo and gov.palin@yahoo were both deleted at the same time.

Here are the screenshots of the emails saved before the account went dark, along with the contact list. It's newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!

CONTACT LIST

Beth Leschper (Beth Leschper SOA) [Edit]
beth.leschper@alaska.gov
Blanche Kallstrom (Blanche) [Edit]
mbkrdk@starband.net
Bristol Palin (Bristol) [Edit]
bristol_palin@hotmail.com
Chuck Heath (Chuck) [Edit]
chckheath@yahoo.com
fek9wnr@yahoo.com (Todd) [Edit]
fek9wnr@yahoo.com
ftb907@yahoo.com (Frank) [Edit]
ftb907@yahoo.com
Heather Bruce (Heather) [Edit]
khbruce@gci.net
ivy.frye@alaska.gov (Ivy SOA) [Edit]
ivy.frye@alaska.gov
ivyfrye@yahoo.com (Ivy Personal) [Edit]
ivyfrye@yahoo.com
Judy Patrick (Judy Patrick) [Edit]
jpphoto@mtaonline.net
kris.perry@alaska.gov (Kris Perry SOA) [Edit]
kris.perry@alaska.gov
krisandclark@yahoo.com (Kris Personal) [Edit]
krisandclark@yahoo.com
paymckhea@yahoo.com (Molly) [Edit]
paymckhea@yahoo.com
Roseanne Hughes (Roseanne Hughes SOA) [Edit]
roseanne.hughes@alaska.gov
Sally Heath (Mom) [Edit]
salheath@mtaonline.net
Sean Parnell (Sean Personal) [Edit]
sparnell@alaska.com
Sharon Leighow (Sharon SOA) [Edit]
sharon.leighow@alaska.gov
Sleighow@aol.com (Sharon Leighow Personal) [Edit]
Sleighow@aol.com
Track Palin (Track) [Edit]
track_44@hotmail.com

UPDATE:

ARLINGTON, VA — Today, McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Manager Rick Davis issued the following statement concerning reports about Governor Palin's email and an invasion of privacy:
"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment."

Point one: legitimacy confirmed! Point two: I guess we'll have to blow up the internet now?

In the aftermath of the supposed hacking, someone deleted both the gov.palin@yahoo.com and gov.sarah@yahoo.com accounts. Emails sent from Palin's Yahoo account made up part of a government inquiry into the firing of a state police commissioner; deleting the account would wipe out any emails investigators haven't already obtained. Could this be considered obstruction of justice?

(Original photo by jmedkeffphoto)

Excerpted from Time:

You may not realize it, but 4chan has probably touched your life. Possibly inappropriately. 4chan is unusual in several ways. It's extremely large and active; it gets 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month. Since moot started it in 2003, those visitors have put up 145 million posts. By some metrics, 4chan is the fourth largest bulletin board on the Net.

4chan is also very profane. A phrase from Star Wars comes to mind: It's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Spammers don't even bother to spam 4chan; Google started searching it only six months ago. But it is the wellspring from which a lot of Internet culture, and hence popular culture, bubbles. In his way, moot is one of the most powerful people on the Web.

The Wall Street Journal's report. Note to Olds: Correct usage is "rickroll," not "Rick Roll," but rickrolling is already over. Stick to LOLcats — those will be around forever.

After appearing on the site, "LOLcats," humorous images of cats with loud text beneath them in a fake language called "LOLspeak", stormed the Web last year. (For example, instead of saying "hello," the cats would say "oh hai.") Another phrase "So I herd u like mudkips," a reference to a sea creature from the popular animated show "Pokémon," spawned thousands of tribute videos on YouTube. 4chan.org began as a simple message board with pictures and text. It was started by Christopher Poole in his Long Island bedroom in 2003 when he was 15 years old. Since then it has grown to more than 3 million monthly users, according to Mr. Poole.

One of the site's most popular memes is an online bait-and-switch known as the "Rick Roll."

The Time piece is livelier that the Journal's, but guess what shows up in it: that's right, all the exact same facts! 4chan was started by a 15-year-old kid. It is dirty. Memes. LOLCats. Big audience, small money. Porny! Hard to sell ads! But "moot," the founder of the site, does have the right idea, PR-wise:

He wouldn't be above cashing out for the right price, which is $580 million, which is what Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. paid for MySpace in 2005. "I try to work Murdoch into any interview I give," he says. "Rupert Murdoch? moot@4chan.org."

My shirt right now is as wrinkly as Rupert Murdoch. Meme!

[WSJ, Time]

A member of 4chan posed as a 13-year-old girl to talk to Ron. In the ensuing dirty talk on MSN chat, the chatter convinced Ron to drink his own urine and play with a dildo, all on webcam. The chatter took screenshots and uploaded them to 4chan.

As long as the screenshots qualify as evidence, Ron could land in jail for soliciting sex from a minor, but that doesn't matter. These kids play a lot dirtier than Chris Hansen and his crew on To Catch A Predator. The chatter (actually "a male of undisclosed age," possibly still under 18) helped other 4chan users gather Ron's personal information. Someone posted links to various possible Reverend Rons, and the 4channers are scouring the pages for contact info to harass him.

So! Is their behavior noble, despicable, or some pervy mixture? DISCUSS.

UPDATE: The reverend himself apparently just entered the forum — or someone just grabbed a photo of him and is playing a joke, which seems more likely.

Incidentally, "dickbutt" is 4chan's latest meme. That's all the meme is: writing "DICK BUTT." I hope it gets as popular as LOLcats and Rickrolls.