NorfolkMetro hacked down in its Prime

Humiliated, like a dying disused dog.

Last week, a cyber assassin assassinated three websites owned by Jeff Maisey, publisher of Veer Magazine, Virginia Craft and NorfolkMetro.com. All three websites were hosted on GoDaddy, the hosting company.

Everything evaporated. Nothing is left, except some very pissed off people, me included.

The more delusional of us might suspect foul play from the Jolly Media Giant.

My first thought was that someone in the hacker world working for a competitor planned to sabotage Godaddy, since Godaddy is planning to go public soon with an initial public offering of $100 million.

But a scan of news sites and Godaddy's site produced nothing that would indicate that Godaddy's servers were hacked en masse. Godaddy's servers were hacked two years ago, forestalling Godaddy's public offering then.

So, was it just Maisey's websites?

Apparently, yes.

Everything evaporated. I mean everything, from templates to editorial to photos to the thousands of unpublished comments and complaints.

A Godaddy technician said a virus was embedded in a post eight months ago and scheduled to go viral – last week.

Tom Robotham, Veer's crowning columnist suggested that “it is unlikely this was random” and said this is an example of why print isn't dead – yet.

Robotham has a point.

Print isn't dead. Yet. Yet.

And Yet.

If the printing press had been sabotaged and blown to hell and back and the detritus of Veer polluted our pristine atmosphere, think then how long it would take to publish. It is unlikely it would be hours and it would be more likely it would be months.

And it is even more likely you could create a blog, write some copy and be a hot shot publisher in a matter of hours. On the Web.

Robotham has a point. Random, it wasnt.

This was selective.

The websites were targeted. This is, indeed, a cyber crime. Call in the FBI.

The loss of websites means the loss of a livelihood. It is vindictive and nasty. Yet quite brilliant. Install a sleeper virus to blossom into a thicket of thorns in eight months.

Critics of Veer and NorfolkMetro abound. This could be one pissed off reader. Or the assassin could be someone with an unflinching and frivolous sense of humor.

It could be you.

Or you.

Or city officials who seethed in silence over a post or column, who wanted to be ranked number 1 instead of not ranked at all.

Or a Chinaman in a crowded apartment in Shanghai getting his kicks by sabotaging obscure websites based in Norfolk, Virginia.

I don't think so.

I can't imagine who would be so vindictive and mendacious as to sabotage platforms of democratic dialogue.

Let us examine what we know. The virus was introduced in a post or comment eight months, putting the introduction of the virus last December.

At the time, NorfolkMetro was barely two months old. So I suspect the virus was slipped into a comment, possibly, on the NorfolkMetro website, hosted on the same platform as Veer and Virginia Craft Beer.

Someone could have taken down Veer a long time ago, but didn't. It just so happened that the virus exploded after the introduction of NorfolkMetro.

The less imaginative of you would say it's a coincidence. The more imaginative of you would say that someone intended to assassin, to murder, maim and mutilate.

But NorfolkMetro?

But richer targets exist and persist...say, the Virginia News Source, the digital mouthpiece of the Libertarian party and Tea Party.

It is, will be. Soon. Endon.