Hackers land on The Sun web site

Hackers have cracked the security of The Sun's web site, posting a fake story claiming that Rupert Murdoch, chairman of media giant News Corporation, has died.

Technology and gadget site Gizmodo captured an image of the story.

The site was taken offline last night and a message from a Twitter account claiming to speak on behalf of hacktivist group Anonymous claimed responsibility.

"We have joy we have fun we will mess up Murdoch's Sun: Hi Rupert! Have fun tomorrow at the Parliament! #AntiSec."

However, Anonymous splinter group and hacking pranksters Lulzsec also claimed the hack was their work.

This is despite Lulzsec claiming to have disbanded last month amid growing pressure from law enforcement.

Web sites for The Sun, The Times and parent company News Corporation itself have been either offline, or slow to respond since the attack.

It is likely that internal administrators took the sites down themselves for a time as a precaution.

In 2009, a vulnerability was found in the "contact us" section of The Sun's site, which allows malicious code to query the site's database. It is possible that this vulnerability was used in the hack.

A properly coded webform would not allow code execution, and could have prevented this attack.

Lazy or inept coding can make sites vulnerable to this type of attack, however it is not uncommon, even among organisations for whom security is supposedly paramount.

In 2010 a web site owned by The Royal Navy was attacked in this manner, and this year security firm HBGary was victim to the same form of attack.

Both Rupert Murdoch, his son James and former CEO of News International Rebekah Brooks are due to face questions in the House of Commons today about the phone hacking scandal that has rocked the company in recent weeks.

No one at News International was available to comment at the time of writing.