Harvard newspaper hacked just to make fun of grad speaker Mark Zuckerberg
Harvard dropout and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg found himself the subject of fake news on Thursday after the school's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, was hacked.
Instead of the Crimson's regularly planned special commencement issue, the website showcased some not so flattering photoshops and strange headlines.
The fake issue was on the homepage briefly as Zuckerberg, who left the Ivy League university 12 years ago to start Facebook, was about to deliver his commencement speech on campus. Manipulated photos of Zuckerberg's face filled the photo slots on the page, while headlines about Facebook, the Winklevoss twins, and intentional misspellings of Zuckerberg's name flowed freely.
"Mark Zoinkerberg at it again," read one; another, "'Zuck! Zuck! Zuck!' cheers Zuck at commencement." In the "Most Read" section the second story is, "Boy wonder Mruff Zunderbrall scores winning goooal!!"
In response to the front page trolling, The Harvard Crimson tweeted out that they were not the ones responsible for the spread:
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All the fake content has since been removed and things seem back to normal with "Year in Review 2017" at the top of the page along with remarks from former Vice President Joe Biden who spoke on campus Wednesday.
We reached out to the Harvard Lampoon, the satirical student publication and fierce rival to the Crimson, to see if they had any insight into the hack. Nothing yet, but it's graduation day.
UPDATE 2:57 p.m. PT: The Harvard Lampoon claimed responsibility for the online attack that stayed up on the Crimson website for about 10 minutes Thursday. During a phone call, the publication said were planning future hacks on the site. An unidentified staffer from the outlet said, "We've been in a rivalry for many years. But it has never entered the tech sphere or cyberspace."
Topics Cybersecurity Facebook
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
