When New York Magazine’s website went down yesterday, many readers thought this was due to the overwhelming traffic it attracted with its cover story, picturing the 35 women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby.

However, overnight, a hacker has claimed he launched a DDoS that took the publication offline.

The hacker, going by the name ThreatKing, made the announcement in short tweet posted from the Vikingdom2016 hacking group account.

ThreatKing reportedly told The Daily Dot that the DDoS attack was in no way related to the Cosby story and that his reason was simply because he “hates New York.”

“Many stupid people at [sic] New York,” he said “I have not even seen the cover, LOL.”

“I went to new York 2 months ago [sic]. It was really bad,” he went on. “Someone pranked me. Everyone started laughing and sh*t. The first 10 hours being there. Some African-American tried to prank me with a fake hand gun.”

ThreatKing’s claim that he hadn’t seen the cover doesn’t entirely add up as the tweet clearly indicates that he knew that New York Magazine had released an issue that would have many people talking.

According to a  voice clip The Daily Dot heard on the Vikingdom SoundCloud page, the group not only has its sights set on websites in New York, but on US state websites, city websites, agency websites and court websites.

“You have took away [sic] our country and its time to get it back by destroying the United States,” the group said.

While this may look like another online attack on New York and the US as a whole, an even more sinister side to the alleged magazine hack may point to silencing the women in the Cosby story.

Often, women who report abuse by a man in power who is famous and loved by many people, can be threatened into silence by those siding with the alleged perpetrator who don’t want his name dragged through the mud (as they would perceive).

Whatever the cause behind the attack, it probably publicised New York Magazine and the article even more, ironically providing the women with an even bigger audience to tell their stories to.

New York Mag is back up and you can go and read the Cosby story on the front page.

[Source – The Daily Dot, image – CC 2.0 by Prayitno]