Not long after the Malcor hacking controversy became news last week, there have been some rumblings if whether or not these were legitimate hacks or an elaborate PR stunt.

Today we have our answer.

Hadley Stern posted a short article on AppleMatters entitled A Bad PR Stunt where he seemingly admits that Malcor is (surprise!) nothing more than a PR stunt (and I say “Seemingly” because he never actually mentions Malcor in his post).

An excerpt:

I am very sorry to post this publicly but at this point this has gone to far. Apple Matters is a big site, and it runs on Expression Engine, one of the best platforms out there. At this point this joke is begginning to impact other businesses and I cannot let that happen.

Well, so much for that.

UPDATE: According to posts in this thread, Some of the executives for EllisLab, the parent company of ExpressionEngine (the content management system used by Apple Matters, as well as here on Deep Thought) and EngineHosting (Apple Matters’ web host) are not happy. As EllisLab Vice President Leslie Camacho bluntly put it, “EllisLab is not amused. The people responsible for this stunt have been temporarily banned from ExpressionEngine.com until this is worked out. You want to seriously piss us off? Lie about the security of EE and EH in a very public manner.” Later in the thread, Camacho notes that Hadley Stern apologized.

UPDATE 2: EllisLab has posted an official response to the “hacks”.