New York City-hating hacker allegedly takes down 'New York' magazine website

A New York City hater has taken responsibility for hacking New York magazine’s website, bringing down the magazine’s site for hours this morning.

As of this writing, the site is still down.

A member of the hacking group Viking2016, ThreatKing, told the Daily Dot via Skype that the motivating hatred for the Big Apple comes from a visit gone awry: “I went to new York 2 months ago. It was really bad… Someone pranked me. Everyone started laughing and shit. The first 10 hours being there. Some African-American tried to prank me with a fake hand gun.” He also told the website, “Many stupid people at [sic] New York.” Cool.

The attack came hours after New York published accounts from 35 women who say they’ve been raped by Bill Cosby, and the timing had some speculating if readers, eager to view the story online, had overwhelmed New York‘s servers.

But if ThreatKing is to be believed, the attack had everything to do with New York‘s namesake and nothing to do with its incendiary story: ““I have not even seen the cover, LOL.”

Recent tweets from @Vikingdom2016 align with the hackers claims:

https://twitter.com/Vikingdom2016/status/625579467197554688

https://twitter.com/Vikingdom2016/status/625651352170037248

and general tone:

https://twitter.com/Vikingdom2016/status/625596215690981376

A recent tweet is especially disturbing:

https://twitter.com/Vikingdom2016/status/625682621461307392

A Facebook account belonging to Vikingdom2015 is posting similar messages:

And per the Facebook account, ThreatKing is shifting hacking focus from governments to brands:

Yikes.

Danielle Wiener-Bronner is a news reporter.