War with hackers and Dana White


Date: 2012-01-29 00:00:00
Source: http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-27/tech/tech_web_u...
Submitted By: MMAFightsDump

Dana White loves a good fight.

But the Ultimate Fighting Championship president may have second thoughts about mixing it up with members of the hacker collective Anonymous on Thursday night on Twitter, where he was on the receiving end of a brutal punch.

White's personal information, including his Social Security number, cellphone number and address, was published online just moments after the exchange, in which he defended his company's support of the controversial -- and now-shelved -- Stop Online Piracy Act.


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The UFC's website was also hacked for the second time in a week.

The mixed-martial-arts promoter's parent company was a supporter of SOPA, which was intended to crack down on digital piracy. The company, Zuffa, says many of its fights are posted illegally online, either for free or with the pirate sites selling advertising on them.

The back-and-forth kicked off shortly after 9 p.m. when one of the more popular Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous called out White -- an avid Twitter user -- for comments he made in a recent interview.

After UFC's site was briefly hacked last weekend (traffic was redirected to a site associated with Anonymous) White called the Internet "a place where cowards live" and compared hackers to terrorists.

"The way this whole thing has gone down, them hacking our site is the best thing they ever could have done for us. Because what that does is, now, you look like terrorists and now a lot of people who were afraid of you now hate you," White told Ariel Helwani of MMA Fighting. "Is this bill perfect? No. No bill is perfect. I think this thing started off with the right idea. Stealing is stealing ... . It's not right and there's something that needs to be worked out."

He wrapped up with a UFC-style challenge.

"I'm not afraid of you," White said. "You don't scare me. Do it again. I don't care."

Of course, they did.

"Ahoy @danawhite - what do you have against the Internet? We're just curious, as we were quite surprised at the harsh tone of your comments," wrote the people behind the Twitter feed @YourAnonNews.

White responded: "I love the Internet. It helped us grow our biz. Stealing is stealing! And hacking into people's s--- is terrorism."

What followed was a sometimes profane back and forth with White defending his company's stance and Anonymous members or sympathizers either lobbing attacks or defending their own group's efforts, which have included attacking Mexican drug cartels and oppressive governments.

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