April Fool's Day has ended and with it a new phenomenon that will no doubt become an annual event - FAKE Hacked Web Sites. Some of the sites were obvious jokes (with clues hidden in the page's source) and others really don't have any proof one way or another. We'll take their word for it.

There have also been reports circulating in recent days concerning attacks on the White House and NATO. There is no evidence to suggest that their web sites were hacked. Instead, these incidents appear to be little more than Denial of Service attacks, orchestrated by someone with quite a bit of bandwidth and a forceful agenda. Hardly the work of hackers.

Finally, we have seen an increasing amount of fake hacked sites that were really just corporate publicity stunts. These have included MTV and Kipling, those people who already capitalize on hackers with their line of clothes and bags. Isn't it a bit ironic that companies who would no doubt trip over themselves to call the FBI if their site really got hacked are the ones trying to get publicity from the whole hacker aura?