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The personal data of thousands of Sun readers has been compromised, after its website was hacked on July 19th by LulzSec.
The breached data includes phone numbers, names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers and bizarrely applications for Miss Scotland.
The attack appeared to have been in retaliation to the News of the World hacking scandal – at its height on July 19th – since News International owns both magazines.
Immediately following the hack LulzSec claimed responsibility, tweeting "WE HAVE JOY WE HAVE FUN, WE HAVE MESSED UP MURDOCH’S SUN."
The group remerged after claiming to have disbanded, presumably lured out of retirement to ride the wave of anti-Murdoch sentiment for another high profile and popular operation. Though this hack-for-a-hack operation is unlikely to win it any favour with those who’ve had their data compromised.
As well as claiming to have stolen sensitive data, the group also posted a fake story announcing that News International owner Rupert Murdoch was dead. The fake page has been archived here.
Interestingly The Sun’s sister media outlet Sky News is currently claiming the person responsible for posting the stolen information online has no allegiance to LulzSec.
Chris Duncan, director of customer management at News International sent an email to effected users of the site, stating:
“As you may be aware, on July 19 the Sun website was subject to an organised criminal attack.
“It has now come to our attention that some customer information from competitions and polls was breached as part of this attack.
"Details vary, but could include name, address, date of birth, email and phone numbers. No financial or password information was compromised.
"We are contacting you because we believe that information that you submitted to us could have been accessed, and may be published online by the group responsible."
