We’ve been the victim of more than one hacking attempt, so we know what it’s like to have your website taken offline against your will. So does CNN. Facing uproar over anchor Jack Cafferty’s “goons” and “thugs” comments about China, various groups, including one aptly named HackCNN, have made it their priority to take the cable net’s homepage offline. (They also managed to deface The Sports Network’s site, swapping out sports scores for lines like, “Tibet was, is, and always will be a part of China!.”) It’s called a “denial of service” attack, where hackers dispatch botnets, or networks of thousands and thousands of computer they illicitly control, to flood a specific site with erroneous traffic, causing it to sputter out and become unreachable by normal visitors.

But the Time Warner outfit isn’t the only big media company involved in scheme involving rogue technology. Five years later into a civil lawsuit, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is standing in front of a jury on accusations that it was the bully, hiring hackers to fend off rivals in the pay-TV market. “The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar’s Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network’s programming for free.”