Drew Curtis: News Corp man caught farking with Fark
The head of social news site Fark, Drew Curtis, is accusing a manager at a News Corp-owned Memphis TV station of trying to hack Fark’s servers, according to an ”exclusive” report by ValleyWag.
In what has to one of the most bizarre stories in recent months, Curtis is said to have “all-but-conclusive” evidence that Darrell Phillips (pictured), a media manager at WHBQ Fox13 was behind an attempt to hack Fark. Curtis alleges that Phillips sent deceptive emails to Curtis and other Fark staff in an attempt to trick them into downloading a Trojan designed to steal passwords.
According to ValleyWag, the hacker was successful in obtaining server and email passwords of one Fark employee, but was unable to successfully gain access to either the server or email account. The hacker is said to have tried to access Fark’s web-based moderation tools, as well as to view the site’s source code.
The attempt to gain access allowed Curtis to track the alleged hacker to a computer and IP address in Memphis. The IP address, allegedly, matches the IP address of a number of accounts, including a paid Total Fark account, used by Phillips.
Curtis is said to be 99% sure that the hacker was Phillips, or someone associated with Phillips, but has no idea why a Fox television news man would want to hack Fark.
ValleyWag did point out that Phillips’ station has launched its own lame news aggregator OnMemphis, and that Fox News producers are known to use Fark as a source of story ideas.
If the allegations are true, was Phillips snooping to gain an insight into how a competitor’s site works, or was he acting on behalf of his superiors at News Corp? Is News Corp looking at Fark as a possible acquisition?
GAiven that we live in an age when sites make up news, the thought did occur that this story is some kind of hoax. However, given that ValleyWag is an established site, and given the defamatory nature of the story (and the large team at the disposal of News Corp), it’s unlikely that ValleyWag would risk publishing such a story if there weren’t facts to back it up.
Of course, the story has appeared on Fark, and at the time of writing Curtis has not denied the allegations he is said to have made.
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