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from The Tennessean on Friday, December 13, 2002

MURFREESBORO — Internet pornography took over the online edition of a local newspaper last Friday, thanks to the handiwork of an unidentified hacker, the newspaper said.

The hacker, who communicated with The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro via e-mail, said he would give control of the paper's Internet site back and remove the pornography for $10,000, publisher Tom Larimer said.

"We don't actually know his name or even where he is," Larimer said. "This is the first time we've had to deal with this."

The paper fixed the problem on its own, however, and will be more cautious about what information is transmitted electronically, officials said.

Mike Pirtle, editor of the paper, said any site on the Web that is available to the general public is vulnerable to hackers.

Pirtle said the paper has been renting its Web address from Internet company Internicc since 1996. Internicc makes sure that two sites don't share an address, he said.

But the hacker somehow accessed the paper's address registration information and was able to change it to make it appear as though the newspaper's address, www.dnj.com, had expired and was therefore available for anyone to purchase. The hacker then bought that address and linked it to a pornographic site, Larimer said.

Anyone who visited the site looking for Murfreesboro news got something else.

A computer technician with the newspaper spent most of the weekend trying to correct the problem. By Monday morning, the paper had its registered site back.

Prosecution of this individual may be impossible, Pirtle said.

Even though some online readers may have had a shock when they logged on last weekend, most people don't blame the paper, Larimer said.

"People understood the problem," he said. "The problem with the Internet is that it's not regulated; that's part of the problem but also part of its beauty."

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