back to article Angling (re)Direct: Criminals net website of Brit fishing tackle retailer, send users straight to smut site

Miscreants have hijacked the systems of Angling Direct, diverting traffic from its websites to Pornhub and threatening to wipe its internal data. The London Stock Exchange listed retailer of fishing tackle products and equipment said it is "currently managing a cyber security incident after detecting unauthorised activity on …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So long, and thanks for all the fish

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      It looks fishy to me...

  2. Victor Ludorum

    Interesting

    Their MX records now point to Protonmail. They were pointing to Outlook/O365...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting

      Oh cool, so their IT was protected by the latest Microsoft cloud security features.

  3. NightFox

    Maybe they tricked one of the Angling Direct staff into divulging their account credentials? I think there's a name for that but it temporarily escapes me.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a marketing campaign to increase interest in fishing by showing videos of people gertting their tackle out

  5. Andy Non Silver badge

    Must have been

    phished.

  6. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    So are they diversifying...

    ...into the wedding tackle market?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So are they diversifying...

      No, they're diversifying into dogs.

      Who hasn't wanted to be laying out on a river bank, with all your tackle on show, showing off your dog^H^H^Hangling prowess to passing strangers

  7. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    The miscreants successfully...

    ...zipped up and exfiltrated the flies.

  8. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    I wonder if their new webhosts...

    ...have done a video on how to catch crabs.

  9. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Alert

    Their fault

    Since I see all the bad puns have already been spoken for, I will jump in and say that this is clearly the fault of the company. If a medium-sized fishing supply company does not have expert information security staff, the company deserves to go out of business, and the board and employees, from the chairman down to the lowliest shop clerk, should be driven naked through the streets to public ridicule, then they should all be banned from ever using any sort of electronic device as a lesson to them and to others that failure is never tolerated. That'll learn 'em!

    1. Zenubi

      Re: Their fault

      So, you're a moderate?

    2. wardster

      Re: Their fault

      Old Bob the lowliest shop should have his balls chewed off by the shop stock of piranha fish for his lack of knowledge of IT.

      Bear in mind that he holds the award for the BIGGEST fish catch ever?

    3. Cuddles

      Re: Their fault

      "Since I see all the bad puns have already been spoken for, I will jump in and say that this is clearly the fault of the company. If a medium-sized fishing supply company does not have expert information security staff"

      While I sense some sarcasm in this post, this is actually entirely correct. This isn't some little corner shop with only a couple of employees, it's a decent size chain with over 40 physical stores in multiple countries, millions of customers, tens of millions in revenue, millions in profit, and listing on a major stock exchange. So yes, they absolutely should have expert IT security staff. If you want to run an online shop serving millions of people, that's just part of the cost of doing business. Obviously punishing lowly shop staff wouldn't be appropriate, but chair and board? Absolutely. It's their responsibility to run things properly, and they clearly have not done so. You can make some allowances for why something like a local church group run by a couple of octogenarians might not have the greatest IT security, but Angling Direct is well past the size where those kinds of excuses hold water.

  10. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    currently directing 30,000 people a day to PornHub.

    So, at the very least, Pornhub will see an uptick in their advertising revenue.

  11. Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells Silver badge
    Holmes

    I wonder whether this site was chosen because of the "tackle" pun, or because somebody just bloody hates fishing.

    i think either reason is pretty funny.

  12. hoola Silver badge

    Interesting

    I had always assumed that they were part of the Sports Direct/Mike Ashley empire but a quick check shows they appear to be unrelated.

    Something going pear-shaped like this for Ashley would be good.......

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