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NYMag praised for publishing Cosby story on social networks amid website hack

New York Magazine decided to publish its cover story, featuring dozens of women who allege Bill Cosby assaulted them, on Instagram and Tumblr after an alleged hacker attack forced its site offline Monday.

Magazine publishes accounts from 35 women who allege U.S. comedian assaulted them

CBC News ·

New York Magazine decided to publish its cover story, featuring dozens of women who allege Bill Cosby assaulted them, on Instagram and Tumblr after an alleged hacker attack forced its site offline Monday.

The magazine's website was down intermittently Monday amid an alleged hacker attack, but its entire cover piece could be read on the magazine's Tumblr account. A person claiming responsibility for the attack said the hack had nothing to do with the Cosby cover story, but that didn't stop people from praising the magazine for making the piece available while its site stayed dark.

Sunday night, New York Magazine published a story giving voice to 35 women who claim the U.S. comedian assaulted them.

People quickly praised the publication for the story.

However, the site wouldn't load Monday. Instead, an error message would appear.

(CBC News)

At first, some seemed to think the site was simply ill prepared for the high volume of traffic from readers. 

The magazine said it was aware the site was "experiencing technical difficulties" early Monday morning.

While the magazine was able to share the stories of some of the women on its Instagram page, its site remained down Monday afternoon.

Some people were frustrated that the hack happened at the same time the magazine decided to publish this story.

It appeared the magazine's servers were down because of a hacker attack that may be unrelated to the Cosby story, the Daily Dot first reported.

Twitter user Vikingdom2016 appeared to take credit for the attack.

He claimed the site would be down for hours and celebrated ruining New York's big night.

Vikingdom2016 seemed to be working in conjunction with others, as the person referred to a group sending a "massive XML attack" on the magazine's servers. An XML attack is also known as a denial-of-service attack, which can shut down a website.

It appears the magazine was able to get its site back up briefly Monday early afternoon. Vikingdom2016 expressed concern that the site was operational just after 11 a.m.

However, less than a minute later, the person behind the account tweeted that it was offline again.

This appeared to happen one more time Monday afternoon.

Vikingdom2016 also promised "to attack bigger New York websites." The person behind the account told the Daily Dot that the attack was retribution after having a poor experience in New York during a recent visit.

While Vikingdom2016 claimed the attack doesn't have anything to do with the Cosby story, the timing made many suspect someone was trying to silence the women involved.

Some started sharing a cached version of the article to allow people to read the stories.

The magazine itself decided to publish the cover story on Tumblr while it worked on restoring its site.

That led to applause from those who say the story is too important to be brought down by a hack.

Some even saw the silver lining in this situation for the magazine, which has been working to restore its site since early Monday.

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