New York magazine back online after DoS attack following Cosby cover

28 Jul 2015

New York magazine is back online after hackers reacted to a controversial Bill Cosby cover story with an apparent denial of service attack.

New York magazine’s website is back online after it was hit with a denial-of-service attack following the publication of a cover story featuring 35 women who say they were sexually assaulted by actor and comedian Bill Cosby.

New York magazine published the story to its website featuring an extended interview with 35 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault.

But within minutes the site disappeared, along with all content on NYMag.com.

New York magazine’s site was offline for 12 hours going into Monday but appears to be back online.

On Twitter, people claiming to be behind the attacks claimed credit for the attack for a variety of reasons, ranging from animosity to New York city to personal connections with one of the women involved.

One group of hackers, VikingDom 2016, took credit for the attack.

Hints that the attack may be more than just a denial-of-service attack could be seen in terms of editors being unable to access their email accounts.

In an effort to ensure the Cosby story was read, staffers at the magazine republished the story across all of the women’s Tumblr accounts as well as videos on Instagram.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com