Pornography instead of a list of AIM members? That's what happened one fateful Saturday morning. April 27, 2002, will be remembered as the day hackers took over the Entertainment topic on AIM Today. Links that were supposed to pull up a list of members that users could chat with instead pulled up X-Rated pictures!
For eight hours, no matter which of the top three links AIM users clicked on, they'd find the strangest content. Profanity-laced sound files that started playing by themselves. One page even had a MIDI of a song by Prodigy. And, yes, there was pornography. Imagine looking for a list of AIM members to chat with, and finding instaed an animated GIF that flashed four different X-rated pictures.
Apparently, AOL's security was no match for three determined 17-year-olds.