Hacker vandalizes AOL site

An America Online site featuring news about the O.J. Simpson civil trial was the target of an apparently random hacker attack today.

Hackers broke into the Court TV site on AOL either late last night or early today.

"The tech people came in and said, 'We've been hacked,'" said Craig Matters, editor of the law center at Court TV, confirming an anonymous tip to CNET.

AOL could not immediately comment on whether other AOL sites were hacked.

Court TV's technical staff have spent the day fixing the hack but as of 3 p.m. PT, several areas were still not working. When a user clicked onto the area with information about the O.J. Simpson civil case, a screen popped up with the words, "This area is under construction," and beside it the phrase, "It's a PIC of OLAF."

The Court TV Web site on the Internet was unaffected.

This was not the first time that Court TV has been hacked on AOL, according to Matters. "It's the second time it's happened in the last couple of months," he said.

That's not counting the occasions when hackers have tried and failed to break in, sometimes calling Court TV employees to try and talk them out of their passwords.