APRIL 18--Days after Madonna took a sharp swipe at music file-sharers, the singer's web site was hacked Saturday (4/19) by an electronic interloper who posted MP3 files of every song from "American Life," the controversial performer's new album, which will be officially released Tuesday.
The site, madonna.com, was taken offline shortly after the attack was detected early Saturday morning and remained shut for nearly 15 hours. Here you'll find a screen grab of the hacked Madonna site's front page, which announced, "This is what the fuck I think I'm doing."
That is an apparent response to Madonna's move last week to seed peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa with files that appeared to be cuts from her new album. In fact, the purported songs were digital decoys, with frustrated downloaders discovering only a looped tape of the singer asking, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's spokesperson, told TSG that the defacement was a hack, not some type of stunt or marketing ploy.
According to the replacement page, the madonna.com defacement was supposedly "brought to you by the editors of Phrack," an online hacker magazine whose web site notes that it does not "advocate, condone nor participate in any sort of illicit behavior. But we will sit back and watch."
In an e-mail exchange, a Phrack representative told TSG, "We have no link with this guy in any way, and we don't even know his identity." The hacked page also contained a derogatory reference to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, the federal law aimed at cracking down on digital and online piracy.
In addition, the defaced page included an impromptu marriage proposal to Morgan Webb, a comely 24-year-old woman who appears on "The Screen Savers," a daily technology show airing on the cable network Tech TV. (1 page)
BUSTED: Scott Peterson charged with murder of wife, unborn baby.
Featured
