Hackers post phony Tupac story on PBS website

A hacker group posted a bogus report on the PBS website on Saturday evening that claim slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were actually alive and residing in New Zealand.

Apparently retaliating for a recent Frontline program about WikiLeaks, the group, which calls itself @LulzSec or The Lulz Boat, also disclosed passwords and e-mail addresses held by PBS on the public bulletin board Pastebin.com.

Shakur died in a shooting in Las Vegas in 1996. Smalls, whose real name was Christopher George Latore Wallace, was gunned down the following year in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting.

By Monday morning, the fake story, which had appeared on The RunDown under the byline PBS WebTech, was gone. But a cached version remains available:

"Prominent rapper Tupac has been found alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand, locals report. The small town - unnamed due to security risks - allegedly housed Tupac and Biggie Smalls (another rapper) for several years. One local, David File, recently passed away, leaving evidence and reports of Tupac's visit in a diary, which he requested be shipped to his family in the United States."

According to the Australian publication Secure Business Intelligence, LulzSec had earlier targeted Fox News and the X-Factor television show.

In explaining its motivation, "LulzSec" put out a statement:

"Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further... perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside... wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they're sailing next time."