As readers of SOHH.com already know by now, the site was compromised today by hackers. Upon arriving at SOHH.com today readers were greated with such headlines as “50 Cent marries a watermelon.”, “Plies is an Uneducated Nigger faggot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, “DEAD BEAT NIGRA ORDERED TO PAY 40K IN NIGLET SUPPORT” and “THIS JUST IN. TUPAC ALIVE AND WELL!!”

When I first saw these headlines on the site I thought that it was just another day in hip hop news. Plies has never come across as a smart guy and doing songs with Ne-Yo could easily make someone question your sexuality. We all know Tupac fans think that guys is still alive. Russell’s “niglet” support is indeed over 40K. Seemed right in line with what I’d expect from SOHH until I seen the “50 Cent marries a watermelon” headline. Right then I knew something was wrong because 50 has always struck me as more of a cantaloupe type of guy.

Turns out SOHH was indeed hacked by some guys simply known as “4chan (Anonymous_)” who decided to go in and change all the site’s headlines. They also made it so clicking headlines would crash the reader’s browser (trust me, I experienced this first hand). User info such and names and passwords were also compromised in the attack. The group of hackers have also been known to have brought down the Church of Scientology website recently. It appears that the hackers acted after engaging in disputes with readers on SOHH’s forums. From what I understand Allhiphop.com and HipHop DX were also targeted and as of this writing both SOHH.com and AllHipHop’s sites are down.

This is kinda scary. The idea of cyber terrorist targeting hip hop sites. Hopefully this is all an isolated event and not something what we will have to worry about constantly going into the future. Below I’ve added a video report that explains in detail what happened as well as an official statement from SOHH CEO Felicia Palmer.

As many of you are already aware, SOHH.com has been under attack by hackers this week. We noticed the first wave of attacks in our vBulletins forums and as of this morning the whole site was compromised.

It appears that hackers are specifically targeting Black, Hispanic, Asian and Jewish youth who ascribe to hip hop culture. Other websites, including AllHipHop and Da Piff forums, have also been compromised or threatened this week.

We are managing this situation on several fronts. We have taken down the server to patch the security breach and put in protections for future attacks. Also, as this is an international issue, it is being addressed by The FBI and the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group.

We realize the hackers attacked SOHH.com because of our stature in the hip hop space and the people we serve. Unfortunately, we did a poor job of protecting SOHH.com from imminent threats from people who hate our community simply because of our racial and ethnic makeup.

This has brought to light our vulnerabilities and those of the internet publisher and users as a whole. What’s possible now is for us to join together to identify and eliminate this threat.

If you are under attack and have any information about these attacks please submit a report to the FBI cyber crimes unit here: https://complaint.ic3.gov/