Lady Gaga's UK website is hacked, Universal confirms

Lady Gaga's UK music website has been hacked, her record company Universal has confirmed.

The firm said a number of its sites had been targeted but that no passwords or financial information had been taken in the attack last month.

"The hacker took a content database dump and a section of email, first and last name records were accessed.

"There were no passwords taken and no financial information taken," a Universal statement said.

"Universal Music takes information protection very seriously and has put in place additional measures to protect personally identifiable information.

"All those affected have been advised of the intrusion into our sites. We also informed the Information Commissioner's Office, the police and our trade body, the BPI."

In June, an 18-year-old computer hacker who stole songs from Lady Gaga and other artists was sentenced to 18 months detention in Germany.

Last week the singer's official YouTube channel was blocked over a copyright dispute before being restored. Rihanna has recently overtaken her to become the most popular female star on Facebook.

Murdoch’s Sun Newspaper Hacked by LulzSec

 by Chris Taylor

Hacker group LulzSec, which previously announced it was disbanding, has evidently decided to come out of retirement.

The site managed to redirect the homepage of what is now News International’s best-selling newspaper, The Sun — sister paper to theNews of the World — to the LulzSec Twitter account.

Minutes earlier, the hacker group reportedly managed to redirect the Sun’s homepage to a fake news story on the sudden death of Rupert Murdoch. That hack was widely reported, though few sources save the UK-based Guardian actually saw the hack with their own eyes.

The hacks apparently began taking place as news was breaking about the ongoing News of the Worldwhistleblower scandal. Former NOTW reporter Sean Hoare had exposed the publication’s hacking of source’s phones to The New York Times, the BBC, and international audiences last fall and again last week. Today, it was revealed that Hoare had been found dead. The LulzSec attack, although not explicitly stated as such on the LulzSec Twitter account, would ostensibly a retaliation for any possible involvement on Murdoch’s part.

The Sun, a tabloid with more than 3 million readers, was launched in the late 1960s and quickly became infamous for its scantily-clad “Page 3″ girls. It was credited with swinging the UK’s 1992 election to the Conservative party — which it bragged about in the front page headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It.” Five years later, it backed Labor leader Tony Blair, who won in a landslide.

LulzSec has previously hacked the websites of the CIA, the U.S. Senate, Sony Entertainment and several others. The hacker collective also seems to have brought down the official website of News International.