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19/08/2015

Mumsnet Co-Founder Subject To 'Swat Attack'

One of the co-founders of parenting website Mumsnet has been the subject of a "swat attack".

A swat attack is a type of harassment, wherein a perpetrator calls emergency services out to a victim on false pretences. Justine Roberts revealed that she had suffered the attack in the early hours of last Tuesday (11 August). Another member of the site was also targeted in a similar incident.

Meanwhile, a number of accounts on the website have also been hacked, and members have been encouraged to reset their passwords. There was also a hack to the site's administrative functions, Ms Roberts revealed in a statement on one of the Mumsnet forums, while an attempt was made to force the site offline by flooding it with internet traffic in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

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She wrote: "An armed response team turned up at my house last week in the middle of the night, after reports of a gunman prowling around.

"A Mumsnet user who engaged with @DadSecurity on Twitter was warned to 'prepare to be swatted by the best' in a tweet that included a picture of a Swat team, after which police arrived at her house late at night following a report of gunshots.

"Needless to say, she and her young family were pretty shaken up. It's worth saying that we don't believe these addresses were gained directly from any Mumsnet hack, as we don't collect addresses."

The Twitter account referred to by Ms Roberts has since been suspended, but it had previously tweeted 'RIP Mumsnet' on its account. It is also alleged to have claimed to have stolen data from the website, the BBC has said.

Other incidents include visitors to the Mumsnet homepage being automatically redirected to DadSecurity's Twitter profile, posts on the website being re-edited without the authors' permission and a DDoS attack. This resulted in Mumsnet receiving around 17,000 requests per second – it usually received between 50 and 100.

Investigations are ongoing as to how the hacks were carried out.

As a precaution, members of the site are being asked to create a new password in order to access Mumsnet.

(JP)

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"One of the co-founders of parenting website Mumsnet has been the subject of a "swat attack"."