Malicious hackers tend to leave the widely read quasi-tech website BoingBoing.net alone. It has kind of a cheeky approach and has never been anti-hacker. But the site got overtaken last night and all content replaced by a picture of a guy in a strange/obscene costume and a message saying that the site shouldn’t be talking about security issues. Presumably this was from their post by Glenn Fleishman about Firesheep, since that was the last security-related thing on the site before the hack.

******UPDATE: I’m told that I’m wrong about the attack having anything to do with Glenn’s article. My presumption was incorrect and I apologize for jumping to conclusions.******

It’s interesting to see this incident in the continuum of other stories about hacked sites, many of which are funny like the Gene Simmons shutdown. But it still points to a situation where if someone doesn’t like what you have to say, they can shut down your ability to say it. That’s troubling both in terms of free speech and in terms of how hackable the web seems to be. BoingBoing is now back up.