Hacker attack on Bild.de turns out to be a marketing stunt

 
Over the weekend, there was one main topic on the Internet in Germany: the hacker attack on the online portal of tabloid newspaper Bild. It has now emerged that this was actually just a marketing stunt to draw attention to the imminent relaunch of the site in mid-December. The flickering and slightly graphically disfigured website read: "We will be shutting down this website in a few days!" and "Hacked by Cyberduckz". The message from the "Duckz" was a hoax. Bild has yet to comment on the fictitious hack. "From a marketing perspective, I don't think this kind of action is necessarily effective," said Harald Schrefl, owner of the online marketing agency Webperfect, to Pressetext. It might work in the short term, but such gimmicks wear off very quickly. And: "If users think that a website has been hacked, this doesn't really have a positive effect on the image of the website operator." Most people probably won't take it that seriously. But it remains to be seen whether the gag strategy works or not.