Gloucester Stage Website Hacked With Terror Images

Terrifying pictures including those of dead babies, injured children, fragments of war and messages related to pro-Hezbollah data recently flooded the website of a Gloucester theater company. The major reason behind the attack is believed to be the name and founder of the theater company. The name of the founder is Israel Horovitz, native from Wakefield who started Gloucester Stage Co., in 1979.

Retired Rabbi Myron Geller did not find the news surprising as he had heard of similar cyber attacks through an online rabbinic network. Israel Horovitz pointed at the insignificance of the attack as not more than a bomb explosion on a bus.

Heidi Dallin, a company representative named Barry Wyner, a composer who informed about the attack when he was visiting the website to search ticket information for a friend and found the unearthly images on the website.

Wyner said that he was shocked and to verify what he found, he opened the site on a different browser but there too it was the same. After he was confirmed about the results on a third browser, he informed the officials of Gloucester Stage Company over e-mails. He also alerted the Webmaster of the company's website after which the website was closed for some time to remove the content immediately.

The website representative had told about not lodging a police complaint about the matter while their directors, composers and other staff will put in their best performances during the season. However, it is conformed that Massachusetts' authorities are trying to track a pro-Hezbollah computer hacker.

The theater company described the imagery message as publicizing Hezbollah and suspected that the illegal display occurred because Gloucester Stage's cofounder and artistic director is Israel Horovitz. The site has been re-secured by the company's Webmaster. Horovitz dismissed the incident comparing it to a mere mosquito bite and that somebody was hacking the theater's computer at a time when bombs were being thrown on families. He further noted that the attacker seemed to have targeted a website, which was linked to clashes between Israeli armed forces and Hezbollah guerillas because of a coincidence with Horovitz's first name.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/8/2006