A Hacker Swatted the Owner of Parenting Forum 'Mumsnet'

Justine Roberts, the owner of Mumsnet, a large UK-based parenting forum, was subject to a "swatting" attack—metropolitan police arrived at her house in the middle of the night last week after a troll phoned in and claimed that there was a gunman nearby.

This happened in conjunction with another hack that exposed the site and its users to unauthorized activity. Twitter user @DadSecurity, now suspended, claimed responsibility for the swatting attack. Mumsnet claims one of its users was also swatted after interacting with the Twitter account.

The site was previously hit by a denial of service attack on August 11, for which @DadSecurity also claimed responsibility. For a short period, the site would redirect to the Twitter user's profile page. It's still unknown what the hacker's motive was.

"It became clear that the hackers had got hold of some users' passwords - a fact confirmed late last night, when they posted the stolen passwords online," an announcement on the site read. The site's administrators believe that passwords were stolen through phishing attacks.

Swatting has become an ultimate tool for trolls: it's unstoppable, unignorable, and untraceable. It's easy to phone in for an emergency squad to knock someone's door down, and it's hard to root out which calls are hoaxes or not.

The only thing officials can really do is introduce legislation to try and stem the abuse (this hasn't ended well in the past) or comply, because safety is paramount to any possibility of trolling.