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PBS, hacked, says Tupac is still alive

The hacking group LulzSec breaks into PBS and pastes in a report that says Tupac Shakur is living in New Zealand. Oh, Biggie Smalls is with him too.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

For a while, Tupac Shakur lived in Marin City, Calif. It so happens that I buy my coffee there every morning.

So I wandered down on this Memorial Day to tell Marie and Kurshina at Starbucks that the great rapper is still alive and has made a home in New Zealand.

They weren't buying it. "Nah, he's dead," said Kurshina.

It seems she might be right, for I had been relying on the very vulnerable source that is PBS, which offered that both Tupac and Biggie Smalls had settled for a life in a small town so very far away.

Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Boing Boing reports that this sadly erroneous report was the work of the hacking group LulzSec. Members of this group reportedly aren't terribly happy about a PBS Frontline show called WikiSecrets, which tended not to show WikiLeaks in an entirely favorable light.

LulzSec doesn't seem to have attacked Frontline's site, but thousands of PBS passwords have reportedly been published online. Moreover, Wired reports that LulzSec left something of an image-based calling card that read: "All your base are belong to Lulzsec." The page was reportedly titled: "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. F*** FRONTLINE!"

PBS NewsHour's Teresa Gorman, in between tweeting about her beloved Bruins, confirmed the hack on her Twitter feed .

Somehow, I cannot see Tupac and Biggie hanging out for too long in New Zealand.

At the very least, you might have imagined that they would have spawned a new strain of music, perhaps titled "Sheep Dip." You would think that they wouldn't just sit there on the porch of some little prairie house, in yawning anonymity, while P. Diddy and Kanye hogged the limelight and got the girls.

Still, one can only imagine what might be erroneously reported on PBS next: Taylor Swift and Kanye a couple, perhaps?