Hot off the press: a CNN-affiliated website The Sports Network (also http://sport.si.cnn.com) has just been hacked by a group called HackCNN, and this was the message placed by the hackers on the website:
The Sports Network seems to have regained control of the website in the meanwhile, and here is the message we now find on their homepage:
Please Note
The Sports Network website and other major news sites have been hacked by a political entity from China, and as a result are temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to be back up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
CNN is bearing the brunt of widely-held perceptions among the Chinese masses as the evilest of a western media hell-bent on tearing China apart and spoiling its coming out party otherwise known as the Olympics. Sina has now even devoted an entire mini-site on its BBS that has a banner which screams, “Rise up in anger against the demonisation of the Tibet incident! Chinese netizens fire away at CNN and other western media!” Imagethief has the scoop:
UPDATE: Looks like several bloggers and ourselves were a bit confused. The Sports Network is not a CNN-owned website. Although the site itself is relatively small, s TechCrunch reveals, attracting just 264,000 visitors in February 2008 (Comscore, worldwide), it also powers parts of other large sports sites such as CNN/SI, and as such http://sports.si.cnn.com, was also down.