"Answered prayers at America Online," reads the headline on one article in the September 22 Business Week.

"Sorry, Business Week is currently hacked," read the headline on Business Week's AOL area.

Techno-pranksters had struck again. They re-wrote virtually every word of the welcome screen's text Wednesday night.


Business Week text Hacker text
Try a Transcript! You've Been Hacked
Try Our ArchivesWerd to the Shot Down Crew
BW Online Daily BriefingAOHell 4 Ever
You can't beat the quality
or the price. Seach 40,000 articles free. Get them for a small fee.		Da Shot Down Crew is definitely in the house. West side owns you bitch.
Is America ready for Bravos, the lettuce-powered smoke?
CEO memoirs: A look at the latest.		 AOHell has touched so many lives. Click here to feel the love.



And of course -- they changed the text in the title bar -- from "The World's Best-Selling Business Magazine" to "Business Week is currently hacked."

One Business Week staffer said the attack lasted nearly two hours.

It's the latest in a long series of on-line pranksters successfully defacing the text of the world's largest on-line service. On August 16, "Digital Cities San Diego" had new titles by its icons. Five days earlier, Spin magazine's AOL area was attacked. Less than four months ago, content on AOL's New York Times area was altered--and weeks earlier, attackers hit "The Hub." Even an area for children's soccer and a discussion area for new mothers was attacked.

While you're reading this, a screen-shot of last night's hack is downloading. Click here to see what the vandals wrote on other screens of the Business Week area! (Click on the image below to see what the area looked like when AOL repaired it.)

Below that is a table offering links to screen-shots of all fourteen attacks on AOL content areas. A fifteenth attack was reported by C|Net last November

-- September 18, 1997







Recent hacks
The Hub (3/31/97)
GameWiz (4/4/97)
GameWiz (Again!)(4/25/97)
FTP sites of several AOL employees (4/26/97 through 4/28/97)
The New York Times (4/29/97)
AOL Glossary (5/9/97 through 5/23/97)
Stats Store (5/17/97 through 5/19/97)
Thrive (6/12/97 through 6/13/97)
Kids Kicks (6/19/97 through....)
Fantasy Realm 6/23/97 through....)
Spin magazine(8/10/97)
Digital Cities San Diego(8/16/97)
Business Week(9/18/97)


In addition, hackers hit AOL's Court TV area last November.