Hackers Controlled The New York Times By Hacking A Website In Australia

Australian governmentA group claiming to be the Syrian Electronic Army was able to take down the New York Times on Tuesday by hacking into a web site in Australia, The New York Times said in a statement.

Apparently, the group gained control of the Times' domain name registrar, Melbourne IT. A domain name registrar is a site that sells domain names and controls a domain name server (DNS). DNS is the server that sends you to a web page when you type a URL address into your browser, such as nytimes.com.

By hacking into the DNS server, the group could redirect the traffic going to nytimes.com. The Syrian Electronic Army also said it hacked Twitter. Twitter reportedly also uses Melbourne IT.

Moral of the story: When it comes to the Internet, it's a small world

The SEA claims to be loyal to Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, in the civil war going on in the country. The SEA has previously attacked the BBC, National Public Radio, Human Rights Watch, The Onion and the Financial Times.