Burning Man Web site hacked, taken down

Eight days after Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts festival held in Nevada's Black Rock desert, and attendees are still working to reintegrate with reality.

But for a community integrally linked with technology, and especially the Internet, it may have come as a shock Tuesday to find that the Burning Man Web site has been hacked and has been temporarily taken down.

On Tuesday, the site sported the following message, "The Burning Man website is currently down due to the activities of nefarious hackers. Our system administrators are working on rebuilding the server, and the site will be back up and running as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience."

No further information was immediately available.

But on at least one Burning Man volunteer group e-mail list, those in the know were saying that the site had been attacked by Brazilian hackers. As for why? No one is sure, though it was jokingly posited that perhaps the Brazilians were jealous that Belgians, a large group of whom built perhaps this year's most talked about Burning Man art project, the so-called "Belgian Waffle," had been getting all the press.

In any case, Burning Man tech folks say they are working hard to get a temporary home page up and running, but no one knows how long it will take to accomplish the task. In the meantime, for those wishing to look at photos from this year's event, try Flickr.