Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05t_private> 16Apr98 AUSTRALIA: RADIO ACTIVE HACKERS SPIN A STICKY WEB. By BRYCE CORBETT and KATE MEIKLE. NEWEST kid on the youth radio block, 9inety6ix.1, figures it has either become the victim of a random act of computer hacking - or a sinister case of commercial sabotage. Reacting to the news yesterday that their Website was hacked into and closed down at the weekend, senior sources at the western Sydney FM station said they hadn't ruled out commercial sabotage as a motive. "Obviously we can't point any fingers and we have no way of knowing for sure how it happened, but it [sabotage] is something we have not discounted completely," a source said. "Somebody went to a lot of trouble to single out our Website, break through the security we had in place and close the site down. "Prior to this incident at the weekend, somebody was caught out phoning our offices asking a lot of strange questions and pretending to be from an advertising company." The incident comes only two weeks after the station commissioned radio raters, A.C. Neilsen to survey the greater western region which 9inety6ix.1 predominantly services and which is otherwise not included in the six-weekly ratings results. The survey found that since 1996, the region's listening audience in the hotly contested 18-24 demographic has grown by 40 per cent. And while some advertisers have reportedly warmed to the new station, others have not been so happy to welcome them to the Sydney radio fold. 9inety6ix.1 promotions director Mike Mackay says he is not only unperturbed by this most recent minor setback but rather encouraged by it. "The fact that we have been hacked, the fact that we have had so much feedback and that our techniques are starting to be copied by other stations tells us we're doing something right," he said. -o- Subscribe: mail majordomot_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Dimensional Communications (www.dim.com)
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