SOHH, the enormously popular hip-hop website, was 0wnz0red during the overnight. In its place, oh so clever hackers claiming to represent Ebaumsworld.com (itself an enormously popular "funny video" dumping ground), plastered various racist and anti-Semitic hate speech, Nazi logos, and horrific sex pics (think goat.cx, if you're familiar). While one blog has screencapped the takeover, the website is still in disrepair, so if you're of the faint of heart, at work, or not a morning person, we don't suggest you visit. [SOHH, Street Knowledge - NSFW]

JOSSIP REPORTS As Rupert Murdoch's NDS-EchoStar pay-TV hacking lawsuit continues this morning, an inside source tells Jossip that NDS chief Abe Peled will appear in the courtroom, in person, to testify.

On April 30 he submitted a video deposition to the California court, but suddenly disappeared to London without testifying in person, though he was scheduled to appear as a witness for his company, which makes DirecTV's customer access cards.

Peled's NDS, a News Corp. subsidiary, stands accused of hacking EchoStar's access cards and posting the information on the web for pirates to use to gain free access to NDS competitor NagraStar (which EchoStar provides service to).

In an interesting twist, Peled escaped testimony because NDS listed him as a witness, which meant plaintiff EchoStar felt it didn't need to subpoena him to testify. Oops.

But today, we're told, they'll get to question him. Murdoch, meanwhile, is not expected for the 8:30am local call time.

Guess what keeps getting more glamorous? The espionage trial between EchoStar/DISH Network and News Corp.'s NDS unit, a five-year old case launched with EchoStar accusing NDS of hacking, in the 1990s, its security code and posting it on the web, allowing anybody to create falsified security cards and scam themselves some free DISH Network satellite TV, all because Murdoch refused to merge their pay-TV companies.

The Rupert is now refusing to testify in the civil trial, even though he'd basically just have to nod or shake his head to acknowledge whether or not he knew about the alleged hackings. If he did know, argued the judge overseeing the trial, the jury might be inclined to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages. (EchoStar's chief Charles Ergan already took the stand.)

But Murdoch doesn't want to take the stand. Any really, why should he? Doesn't a rebuttal to a news outlet count as valid testimony? Murdoch told ABC News "that he 'absolutely' denied NDS was involved in any hacking," though we're unclear whether is "absolutely denying" the same thing as "absolutely not doing."

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."

Dateline does more than catch predators: They get caught going undercover at hacker conferences. Michelle Madigan, a producer for the NBC show, tried infiltrating DefCon posing as a regular attendee and not a member of the press, which would have forbade her from videotaping conference-goers without their permission. Instead, a mole at Dateline alerted DefCon organizers about her presence — resulting in a Lindsay Lohan-style chase from the auditorium to her car, filled with unruly photographers and taunting! [Wired]