New York Magazine’s Website Taken Offline Hours After Bill Cosby Feature

In the latest twist in the recent Bill Cosby scandal, a prominent magazine’s website was taklen offline by hackers after running a story about the saga. Surprisingly, the Bill Cosby story was not the target of the hack. Rather, the New York Magazine’s website was hacked because of a disgruntled tourist’s hatred of New York.

The New York magazine published an in-depth piece on the Bill Cosby scandal, including a cover that pictured 35 women dressed in black, placed in chronological order by their alleged year of sexual assault. While the issue drew enormous Internet attention and lit up social media as soon as it was posted Sunday night, the magazine’s website went offline Monday morning until about noon. The culprit: a hacker named ThreatKing, who goes by the Twitter handle Vikingdom2016.

While many people believed the hacker was trying to silence the women pictured on the cover, the hacker’s target of the New York had nothing to do with the Bill Cosby story. The hacker, who spoke with The Daily Dot stated that, “[he] ha[d] not even seen the cover, LOL.” Rather he said that his attack was aimed at the people of New York whom he alleges offended him during his trip to New York City.

Specifically, ThreatKing stated that, “[he] went to new York 2 months ago. It was really bad. Someone pranked [him]. Everyone started laughing and sh*t. The first 10 hours being there. Some African-American tried to prank [him] with a fake gun.” He further stated that, “[he has] seen many pranks go wrong at New York. That got [him] pissed. That’s why [he] chose New York. . .[he wants] to see people die at New York.”

The seemingly off-kilter hacker then said he wanted to keep New York offline for 14 hours. His ramblings included his desire to take back the United States by hacking state websites, city websites, agency websites and court websites. “You have took away our country and its time to get it back by destroying the United States.” For fear of being identified by the FBI, the hacker refused to state what country he was from.