Anonymous defaces Westboro site during live interview

The loosely affiliated hacker collective has defaced the website of the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, known for its anti-gay rhetoric and purely attention-seeking protests, amid an ongoing feud between the two entities.

"Your continued biting of the Anonymous hand, however, has earned you a swift and emotionless [slap], in the form of this very message," read a message from Anonymous posted on the compromised site. "Despite having had the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to and instead responded maturely to your threats, but you have not respected this."

The group posted the letter during a live radio interview Thursday on the "The David Pakman Show" between Westboro spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper and an Anonymous member. Video of the interview is live.

Anonymous infiltrated the website thanks to an unnamed zero-day vulnerability, according to a tweet.

The battle between Anonymous and Westboro began last week, when an open letter was posted to AnonNews.org, which called for the controversial church to end its protests and shut down its websites. A Westboro representative responded in a tweet, asking Anonymous to "Bring it."

But on Monday, Anonymous said it wasn't behind the letter and urged members to not launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against the church's website.

Apparently, however, Anonymous was not pleased with Westboro's continued assault on the hacker organization, including a spokeswoman's reported remarks that the group exists because its members' parents didn't spank them as children.

As of Thursday at about noon EST, Westboro's website was unreachable and downloads.westborobaptistchurch.com was defaced to include the message from Anonymous.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com