If you had a few spare sheckles around on Christmas Day and consider yourself a bit of an (anti)security buff, then perhaps you shelled out a portion of that for access to a BBC server? This was all possible thanks to a Russian hacker who on Christmas Day managed to break into the server and began offering access to others that would pay for the privilege.

Picked up by Hold Security LLC, the hack was supposedly perpetrated by a Russian known as HASH and Revolver, who managed to get into a BBC FTP server, though it's unclear what it's used for. So far the BBC has refused to comment on the news. Likewise it hasn't covered the story on its own news outlets.

As one of the world's biggest media organisations, the BBC is a constant target of attacks

Advertising the hack like this though isn't uncommon. Doing so not only can increase community respect for the hacker responsible, but can lead to collaboration on further hacks, as well as a little side cash generation.

At the moment there's little evidence that anyone has paid up for the server access, though a security consultant from Cylance Inc. was quoted by Reuters as saying that if anyone does, it could just be a stepping stone to gaining further access to BBC assets. Presumably though that will be dependant on the BBC not securing the server or isolating it from the internet.

KitGuru Says: It's interesting that the BBC didn't announce the hack itself. Would make for an easy exclusive. 

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