FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
I'm Farai Chideya, and this is News & Notes. Last week, two popular hip-hop websites were hacked. When users clicked on SOHH.com and AllHipHop.com, they saw the regular content replaced with racist images and racial slurs. For the latest on the cyber attacks, we're joined by Felicia Palmer, CEO and president of 4 Control Media, Inc. That's the company that owns and operates SOHH.com. Felicia, good to have you on.
Ms. FELICIA PALMER (CEO and President, 4 Control Media, Inc.): Thanks so much for having me. We appreciate it.
CHIDEYA: So tell us what happened on the site last week.
Ms. PALMER: Well I mean, what the culmination of a week of DDoS attacks, you know, it started off on Monday with DDoS attacks. And basically what that means is...
CHIDEYA: Please, go ahead. I was about to ask you what that meant.
Ms. PALMER: Yeah. What happens is, you know, basically they send out little robots. They put robots on computers across the country, which make requests your website, which essentially brings your website down because of an overload of requests. So a DDoS stands for denial of service. And they do that by basically clogging up your arteries, basically, with actual requests from robots that are not regular people, and overwhelming your server.
So that started off on Monday, and that took about 60 percent of our site down. And then on Friday, it culminated with, you know, what we call I guess a cross-scripting attack, which essentially, they place - they were able to hack into our system and place images of Hitler, Nazi swastikas, images of slaves with nooses around their necks, images of mutilated people. So that's what appeared on the site on Friday morning.
CHIDEYA: Now I understand this has gone all the way to the FBI. What is the update on who these people are, and do you have any sense of where this case will go from here?
Ms. PALMER: Well, you know, we don't want to provide too much information, because at the same time while we're doing this, we're waiting for them to strike again and we're collecting data every time they reach us they're giving us more data. But one thing I will tell you, these people are in the United States, they're roughly between the ages of 16 and 21, a few of them are based in Texas, Waco, Texas. And, you know, we know that these are young people who pretty much thought it was a joke, you know. Who, from what I understand, it all started from some sort of internet beef that they had with people who were on our forum, and decided that they wanted to make this big production out of it. So, you know, it started off as some sort of joke, and now it's turned into, you know, interruptions in our business and an FBI probe.
CHIDEYA: Do you think - your own personal opinion - that these are pranksters who are using the racial images as kind of a sidebar, or racists who are using technology?
Ms. PALMER: Well, you know, it's interesting, because at first I thought it was a prank. They're definitely beyond pranksters. You know, they definitely have access and knowledge about attacking and hacking. So I mean, they're beyond pranksters. These guys do this for - this is what they do on a regular basis, and we're the target now. We became the target as a result of this kind of beef that was going on with some of our members.
But we do know that this is a racist attack, because the images we saw, the Nazi swastikas, the images of the slaves with the nooses and mutilated bodies, in addition to the information that the FBI and we have uncovered gives us access to conversations that they've had online, which they've been using the N word, where they've talked about how their neighborhoods have been overrun by, you know, niggers and spicks and things of that nature.
So, you know, people automatically saying, oh, we're trying to play the race card, but this was actually a racial issue, because these people are attacking us and attacking us on the basis of who this site serves, which are predominantly - I mean, hip-hop serves all cultures so it's a misnomer that people think that it's a black website. But certainly African-Americans, Jewish people, Latinos, whites, everybody comes to this site. And I guess it's considered - they perceive it to be a African-American thing, or, you know, they're attacking us on that basis as well.
CHIDEYA: Well Felicia, thanks for the info, and we'll definitely follow up on this one.
Ms. PALMER: Thank you for having us, and we will keep you posted.
CHIDEYA: Felicia Palmer is the CEO and president of 4 Control Media, which owns and operates SOHH.com. She joined us from the NPR Studios in New York.
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