A hacker is waging war against Mumsnet and has 'swatted' its founder
Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, wrote a blog post detailing her own plight as well as that of Mumsnet which has been partially hacked, the results of which are as yet unknown.
According to Roberts, @DadSecurity took control of various administrative privileges on Mumsnet that allowed them to redirect the homepage of the site to their Twitter page before unleashing a DDOS (denial of service) attack which creates too many site load requests, causing the site to crash.
After this, @DadSecurity then engaged in "Swatting," a term used to describe making a phone call to the police reporting a bogus incident at the victims house. The aim is to get the police to mobilize a team-in America this is usually a SWAT team, hence the name-to investigate. The call was made in the middle of the night and so Roberts received a visit from the Metropolitan Police while sleeping, an experience she described as leaving her family "shaken up."
All throughout this, @DadSecurity issued tweets claiming responsibility for the swatting ( "prepare to be swatted by the best"), the DDOS attack and also made vitriolic statements such as "RIP Mumsnet." The account has now been suspended.
This isn't the first time Mumsnet has come under attack. In 2012, a group called Fathers4Justice decided to create adverts that specifically spoke out against Mumsnet's "gender hatred" directed towards men. This attack, however, did not go as far as @DadSecurity.
Mumsnet is currently reviewing its online security and has asked all users to change their passwords.