Hacker defies the force

The force was unable to save Lucas Arts this weekend, when a hacker defaced the game developer's website.

Lucas Arts is renowned for a plethora of games based on the Star Wars brand, for which sister company Lucas Film is famous. But it would seem that the teachings of Yoda could not help the administrators defend the site.

Yesterday, a hacker calling himself "Young Thief" broke into the support site at www.lucasarts.com and defaced it with a bizarre message about those pizza-eating amphibious mutants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Although the defacement was in Portuguese, a rough translation reads: "Brazil rules. I thank the master Splinter, without his training the Turtles would be nothing."

Anyone who remembers the 80s phenomenon will know that Splinter was the one-eared mutant rat who became the Turtles' mentor.

The defacement was still visible up until about 4.30 BST today.

But the support site was suddenly unavailable just before this story went live, suggesting that the Jedi-trained techies at Lucas Arts suddenly noticed the great disturbance in the force and got round to fixing it.