Hackers claiming allegiance to the “hacktivist” group Anonymous defaced the University of British Columbia (UBC) food services website on Aug. 25, replacing the usual display with images and lyrics of the Insane Clown Posse band.
According to text on the website, it was “hacked by ShadowDXS for never feeding Canadian Juggalos at UBC college.”
The term “juggalos” refers to Insane Clown Posse fans, a group classified as a “gang threat” by the FBI in 2011. The ShadowDXS twitter handle belongs to Branndon Pike, who has since denied hacking the website.
“I’m gonna make this clear, I have not defaced any websites. The people attached to #Anonymous are not representing me,” Pike tweeted. “#Anonymous hacked that site. Before it happened I had no idea it existed.”
Within hours of the hacking, the original webpage was restored.
Christopher Yong, senior client services manager for UBC IT, confirmed that the hackers attacked only the food services site but were not able to access personal information.
“Our student portal is severely hardened,” Yong told the Ubyssey, the university’s student newspaper. “There’s no way they’re getting into that one.”
According to Yong, a new employee forgot to reinstate several security measures after updating the website, which caused the site to become vulnerable to hackers. Yong suspects that an American group is responsible for the attack.
