Grimes apparently can add the title of cyber criminal to her resume!
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, the We Appreciate Power singer actually admitted to launching a cyber attack in order to blackmail a blog into taking down a story about her. Whoa, does she know people read these things? Could she face legal consequences still??
OK, let’s rewind a bit…
Related: Grimes Moved On With WHOM After Elon Musk Breakup?!
If you’ve never heard of Hipster Runoff, it was a satirical blog about music and culture run by Carlos Perez — better known as “Carles” — between 2007 to 2013. The blog went offline for a while in 2012 after being hacked by an unknown person. He told former editor-in-chief of Motherboard Derek Mead at the time:
“My hosting company and support team say that there are signs of foul play on the server, and some of the last actions before it crashed are very suspicious … My server disk has crashed and remote backups were sabotaged.”
Carles said he had an idea about who may have been responsible for the attack on his site, believing it was a musician or band behind it. However, he refused to publicly name names at the time. Although the site eventually came back online, it never quite recovered from the attack and was ultimately sold off the next year.
It remained something of an internet mystery who took down the site… until now! It looks like the culprit has decided to come forward, and it’s none other than Elon Musk‘s ex!
Related: Grimes Says Elon Musk Lives ‘Below The Poverty Line’
Yep, Grimes admitted to being the mastermind behind the takedown! Did we say admitted? We mean bragged! As the 34-year-old artist proudly explained, she took action after Hipster Runoff posted a picture of her kissing another woman at a party, presented on the site as a kind of “Grimes gone wild” story:
“Back in the day, like before the woke era, I actually got canceled for this. I was just at a party with my friends. Someone took this photo, and it got leaked to this website called Hipster Runoff. I was trying to be like, all integrity, and start my career, and it was like ‘Grimes Gone Wild’ or something, and it was just this like, super wack, mean story, and it was like this meme which was going all over the internet.”
Cancelled for kissing another woman? Man, that was a different time…
Grimes obviously did not appreciate the story. But she actually decided to do something about it! With the help of a friend who Grimes would not identify (but apparently worked for a video game company), she launched a “DDoS” attack on the blog to “basically blackmail” Carles into taking the article about her down. Whoa! What?!
FYI, a DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, is an attack meant to flood a website’s server with so much artificial traffic that it crashes. It’s no joke, these things destroy sites! Grimes continued:
“We were like, ‘We’re not gonna let you put your site back up until you take the story down.’”
Grimes claimed Carles eventually succumbed to the blackmail and took the picture down, hence the site returning. She boasted:
“It was like, my coolest hacker moment.”
It remains unclear if the pictures were actually leaked. According to infosec professional Jackie Singh, the photos might have first appeared on a Montreal-based musician and nightlife photographer’s website.
Nevertheless, what Grimes did actually does have some MAJOR legal ramifications. According to Upguard, DDoS attacks are a federal crime, potentially punishable by up to 10 years in prison depending on how much damage is done! Like we said, no joke!
However, Grimes is beyond the statute of limitations at this point, which is usually five years for this kind of crime. So we guess that’s why she feels comfortable just casually dropping this info!
Watch the interview for yourself (below)!
Reactions, Perezcious readers? Can you believe Grimes casually confessed to blackmail? Let us know your thoughts in the comments (below)!
[Image via Vanity Fair/YouTube]
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