Silicon Valley gossip site, Valleywag is reporting that a Memphis-based Fox TV news correspondent named Darrell Phillips has tried to hack the silly newslink site Fark.com.Uh, right.From Valleywag…But consider this: Phillips’s station has launched a news aggregator, OnMemphis.com. The hacker appears to have been hunting for source code and trying to log into Fark’s Web-based moderation tools. A look at either would be helpful to someone designing a social-news website. Phillips might claim he was researching a story on the security of social news sites. If so, the fact that Fark employees so readily detected the intrusion and shut it down doesn’t leave him with much of a tale to tell. But certainly, for a newsman, this would at least be a plausible cover story.And one last motivation that should be mentioned, in the service of conspiracy theorists everywhere: Could Phillips have been working on behalf of higher-ups at News Corp.? OK maybe I’m biased, but my perception is that TV news guys in Memphis generally don’t have the technical chops to be hacking Web sites, but what do I know?And remember, this is Valleywag: The site that (totally incorrectly) blamed a recent data center outage at San Francisco’s 365 main on a drunken employee’s rampage. Related content opinion Direct Marketing Association on information security: Be safe By Robert McMillan Apr 08, 2011 3 mins Data and Information Security opinion As violence escalates, Libya cuts off the Internet By Robert McMillan Feb 18, 2011 2 mins Core Java opinion An FBI backdoor in OpenBSD? By Robert McMillan Dec 15, 2010 5 mins Data and Information Security opinion Congressional candidate says Democrats leaked his Social Security number By Robert McMillan Sep 28, 2010 1 min Data and Information Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe