Visitors must have been shocked when they went to visit the popular online store “Dash” owned and maintained by the famous Kardashian sisters, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney. The girls are the stars of the hit television show Keeping Up with the Kardashians which can be seen on the E! channel. The website was attacked by hackers who posted explicit images, including a controversial sex tape featuring Kim Kardashian herself and internationally known hip hop artist Ray J.
The situation escaladed when an individual calling himself “Smokey” posted the administrative logon information to the Kardashian’s website on an online forum that is frequented by hackers. The same hackers who claim responsibility for the hacking of Paris Hilton’s Cell Phone, Tila Tequila’s Myspace, Twitter, Lexis Nexis, and a variety of other celebrity related hacks.
It appears as though members of DigitalGangster.com live up to the forums name. The owner of the website is known as “ytcracker”, he was arrested and charged in 1999 for a similar incident which involved the hacking and defacement of the front pages of NASA’s Goddard Flight Center. He is well known online for being a “nerdcore rapper”, a style of music in which he raps about hacking and computers. It does not appear that ytcracker was involved in this particular hack and he later claims on the forum that he has no control over what the members of his website do.
The hacker responsible for the intial hack evidently had full administrative control over the website and managed to change the cost of the stores merchandise to $1.00, he then proceeded to encourage the forum members to purchase items at the reduced price. Instead, several members of the online forum attacked the site by uploading explicit text and images, which included the sex tape of Kim Kardashian.
Smokey later posted screen shots on his wordpress account, documenting the defacements he made while he had administrative rights to the website. He states on his personal blog that the hack was made possible through an SQL injection vulnerability, but he did not go into further detail.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians third season is set to begin in March 2009. It is unclear whether or not the Kardashian family has been made aware of the hack, the original link to the hacked page is showing an error and the offensive images seem to have been removed.
As of late there has been a number of celebrity related hacks, including Obama’s Twitter, Sarah Palin’s E-mail account, the leak of Miley Cyrus photographs and a strew of other cyber attacks targetted at celebrities.
I guess the only question is “Who’s next?”
Alison. M, “Kardashian Sisters Online Store Hacked”, Associated Content.
