Hackers Nuke Forum Site

The Electronic Disturbance Theater, RTMark, and Federation of Random Action are taking credit for crashing the Web site of the World Economic Forum on Thursday morning with a virtual sit-in.

Late Thursday afternoon, the WEF site—weforum.org—appeared to still be offline, and e-mail messages sent to WEF officals were being bounced as "undeliverable." WEF officials were not immediately available for comment.

The action, which was financed by RTmark, allowed online protesters to download a tool to flood the WEF server with requests for information. "We pity the fools who blindly believe that corporate globalization and the worldwide imposition of neoliberal economic policies can withstand the mounting tide of grassroots resistance," wrote the computer pranksters in their call to action.

This is the second year in a row the WEF site has come under attack. Last year, a group of hackers calling themselves "Virtual Monkeywrench" were able to obtain personal information—sometimes even cell phone and credit card numbers—from hundreds of bigwigs, including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Yasser Arafat.