Adrian Lamo, a 20-year-old self-described "freelance security consultant" (aka a hacker) managed to breach a security hole at Web portal Yahoo that let him alter news stories posted to the site, which draws more than 200 million visitors a month.

Lamo, a white-hat hacker who hacks sites benignly to point out their miserable security, had no problems using just a Web browser to get into Yahoo's content management system.

He then creatively edited a story on a Russian programmer who recently hacked the copyright protection on Adobe's e-book software, adding in a few quotes credited to George W. Bush, to wit: "Some children may have been subjected to the works of Mark Twain or Foucault, but this flagrant illegality will not continue. They shall not overcome. Whoever told them the truth would make them free was obviously unfamiliar with federal law."

Yahoo says it has fixed the security hole.