Cyber Threat Actor: VikingDom2016

ThreatKing is the alias used by a representative of the hacking collective known as VikingDom2016, which claimed responsibility for taking down the New York magazine website in July 2015. The group stated that the disruption was carried out through a denial-of-service attack that flooded the site’s server with overwhelming traffic. According to the article, the website went offline early on the morning of Monday, July 28, and remained inaccessible for approximately twelve hours before being restored. During the outage, magazine staff scrambled to bring the site back online and discovered that corporate email accounts were also unavailable. A source familiar with the incident told reporters that the outlet believed it had been victimized by hackers, although the exact method was still under investigation at the time.

The attack occurred shortly after New York magazine published an extensive exposé on Bill Cosby that featured the accounts of thirty‑five women who alleged they had been raped by the actor, accompanied by a prominent cover image. The magazine had spent six months gathering those testimonies, and the piece was released on Sunday, July 27 at 9 p.m. in New York, immediately drawing a large audience to the site. Following the outage, the magazine responded by republishing the women’s statements on Tumblr and posting video interviews on Instagram to keep the content accessible. In its official statement, the magazine described the incident as experiencing technical difficulties and offered no further details about the cause. The article notes that the disruption appeared intended to generate maximum attention for the group’s actions.

ThreatKing, speaking on behalf of VikingDom2016 via Twitter, offered several remarks that framed the attack as a protest against the magazine’s home city, saying, “New york, A place where the police don’t care and people run wild with fake handguns trying to ‘troll’ and record people.” The representative also claimed knowledge of one of the women featured on the cover, stating, “Want to know a top reason? We know one of them females in the cover.” Additional messages from the group included the declaration “Ny mag, Is just the start” and the boast “Lol, we ruined New York big night.” These statements constitute the only publicly expressed motivations and objectives attributed to ThreatKing and VikingDom2016 in the reported incident.