Website of Bill O'Reilly, FOX News commentator, hacked in retribution

Saturday, September 20, 2008

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According to document-leaking website Wikileaks.org hackers bypassed security at BillOreilly.com, the official website of Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly, exposing personal information of the site's users in a document posted on the Internet.

The one page document, which Wikileaks confirms to be authentic, shows a list of individuals and passwords of those who have accounts on O'Reilly's website, BillOReilly.com. The list, according to the document, contains at least 205 names, e-mail addresses, billing addresses and passwords of subscribers.

"The hack was a response to the pundit's recent scurrilous attacks over the Sarah Palin's email story--including on Wikileaks and other members of the press," said Wikileaks in a statement on their website. According to the report, the security on O'Reilly's website was "non-existent".

"I'm not going to mention the website that posted this, but it's one of those despicable, slimy, scummy websites. Everybody knows where this stuff is, OK, and they know the people who run the website, so why can't they go there tonight to the guy's house who runs it, put him in cuffs and take him down and book him?," said O'Reilly on his show, The O'Reilly Factor, on September 18.

Wikileaks recently published documents from Palin's hacked Yahoo.com e-mail account. The documents had shown that Palin had been conducting matters pertaining to the public or government of Alaska over her private e-mail account.

In an exclusive statement to Wikinews, Wikileaks stated that they will only publish the single page, but also claim to have several more. Wikileaks also states that they have already received "three letters" from staff members employed by O'Reilly "requesting" Wikileaks remove the document, which Wikileaks refuses to do.

"We simply cannot [remove the information]. The system, as per policy, is designed so that files can not be taken down, once up," said Wikileaks to Wikinews.

O'Reilly and Fox News have not yet responded to inquiries.

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Sources

This exclusive report features first-hand journalism by one or more Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

"Bill O'Reilly hacked 2008" — Wikileaks, September 19, 2008
markedmannerf. "Oreilly on Palin Email Hacking" — YouTube, September 18, 2008
"Sarah Palin Yahoo account 2008" — Wikileaks, September 16, 2008

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.