He had been trying to access the obsolete server of a defunct local news station, Channel 9 EyeWitness , which had shut down abruptly in 2004. The server was supposed to be offline, air-gapped from the modern web. But a faulty DNS redirect had left a backdoor open, a dusty corner of the internet that everyone had forgotten to lock.
And only download from directories that look legitimate (e.g., educational, archive.org mirrors, or clearly labeled free content).