New York Taken Down By NYC-Hating Hacker After Cosby Cover Posts Online

Early Monday morning, New York was hacked by someone calling themselves ThreatKing, just hours after releasing its groundbreaking cover in which 35 women who allege Bill Cosby raped them courageously spoke out and were photographed.

According to the Daily Dot, a New York staffer said the company assumes it’s a DDoS attack, but ThreatKing claims the site was taken down because he hates New York City:

“Many stupid people at [sic] New York,” ThreatKing told The Daily Dot over a Skype chat. “I have not even seen the cover, LOL,” he said.

ThreatKing first claimed responsibility for the attack under the Twitter handle @Vikingdom2016. The hacking group Vikingdom garnered some attention earlier this year by claiming attacks on some random goverment websites, including maine.gov for a few hours.

ThreatKing said his hatred of New York City is based on a visit to the city gone wrong. “I went to new York 2 months ago. It was really bad,” ThreatKing said. “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.”

That’s a cute explanation though you’d be forgiven for being skeptical—a takedown of a website after it gives a platform to a host of women allegedly raped by a high-profile man has the distinct stench of MRA hacker tactics, and the story of “some African-American” and “a fake hand gun” sounds like complete bullshit. But the group with which ThreatKing is supposedly affiliated—Vikingdom2016—is supposedly devoted to taking down the websites of city, state, and national government in an effort to “destroy” the United States. Which is, as history tells us, just hella effective as a revolutionary tactic. You go, hackers who are no doubt 15 and under.

As of this publishing, New York is still down. To see the cover, and excerpts from the story, go here.