The Sun newspaper has admitted that user data may have been stolen during the high profile website hack suffered recently.
Online hacker collective LulzSec attacked The Sun newspaper’s website on July 19th and redirected users to their own site which was designed to look exactly like the real deal. LulzSec then used this phony website to post a new story detailing media mogul and News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch’s death.
News Group, the paper’s publisher, has announced that users of the website may have had their data compromised during the attack. Hackers have recently posted information obtained through the recent website intrusion, including contestant information from a recent ‘Miss Scotland’ competition hosted by The Sun.
Information believed to have been stolen included names, addresses, contact telephone numbers, email addresses and dates of birth.
“We take customer data extremely seriously and are working with the relevant authorities to resolve this matter.
“We are directly contacting any customer affected by this.” Reads a statement issued by News International, parent company of News Group. The company was quick to confirm that no financial or password information was stolen during the attack.
In keeping with LulzSec’s tradition of posting their “bounty” stolen from hacked websites, some of the stolen data was posted on Pastebin – LulzSec’s choice of website to post stolen information, mission statements or general messages to their followers.
The file posted by LulzSec contained personal information including detailed biographies of the 14 contestants from the ‘Miss Scotland’ competition.
LulzSec’s spokesperson and mastermind behind their Twitter page, Pastebin posts and more is believed to have been arrested. Known online as ‘Topiary’, LulzSec’s spokesperson is believed to be an 18-year-old man from the Shetland Islands. He is currently on bail and banned from using the internet for the duration, meanwhile the Twitter account for LulzSec that he supposedly ran has fallen silent.