New York City-hating hacker claims credit for shutting down New York magazine

(Image credit: Facebook.com/NewYorkMag)

last updated 27 July 2015

It's every publisher's worst nightmare: On the day a massive story is set to run, your website suddenly goes offline. Unfortunately, it's a nightmare that just became a reality for New York magazine. Less than 24 hours after publishing interviews with 35 different women who spoke about being assaulted by Bill Cosby, the magazine's website has gone down due to a distributed denial of service attack allegedly caused by a person affiliated with the hacking group Vikingdom2016.

The alleged hacker, using the handle "ThreatKing," wasn't even aware that New York was publishing the Cosby story today. ThreatKing is simply on a crusade to shut down any publication with "New York" in its name, due to a personal dislike for New York City. "I went to New York two months ago. It was really bad," said ThreatKing in an interview with The Daily Dot. "Someone pranked me. Everyone started laughing and shit. The first 10 hours being there. Some African-American tried to prank me with a fake hand gun." ThreatKing's future New York-centric targets include The New York Times, the website of New York's FBI bureau, and New York University.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox