In its edition due on newsstands on Monday, Forbes said the hackers, code-named Slut Puppy and Master Pimp, are two of the most wanted figures in cyberspace.

Members of a cyberspace gang called Hackers for Girlies, they have also invaded other Internet sites, including Rt66 Internet, a New Mexico Internet service provider, from which they stole a file with thousands of credit card numbers, the magazine reported.

The report, based on an exclusive interview with Slut Puppy, said the hackers attacked the Times for the thrill of it -- they couldn't agree on a video to watch on September 13 and were bored, so they took over the paper's Web site and replaced the welcome screen with one laced with obscenities and nudity. The newspaper reported the hack to the FBI and the computer crime squadat the bureau's New York office is investigating, a spokesman for the office Joseph Valiquette said.

``No charges have been brought and the investigation is progressing,'' Valiquette told Reuters on Friday. A spokeswoman for the newspaper, Nancy Nielsen declined to comment while the issue was being investigated. ``We take this matter very, very seriously and we don't want to do or say anything that might impede the case,'' she said.

The hackers took such solid control of the Web site (www.nytimes.com) that when Times technicians tried to take it over, the hackers' page kept popping back up for almost three hours, the report said. The technicians finally shut down the site, which normally contains Times news stories, for nine hours.

``They seemed to have no idea how we got in -- or how to stop us,'' the magazine quoted Slut Puppy as saying. Afterward, the duo packed up their computers and deleted or protected data gleaned from their crimes, Forbes said.

The hackers penetratedRt66 in April and in August -- the second time making off with a file containing 1,749 credit card numbers -- and claimed to have assaulted NASA's jet propulsion laboratory, Motorola Inc and Penthouse magazine, Forbes said.

The account did not say how the magazine determined how the hackers did it, but a Forbes spokesman said reporters and editors had ``significant evidence'' not detailed in the story. Nor did it give details about the hackers' personal lives, except to say they worked out of Slut Puppy's three-room condominium for six months this year, a room the magazine's reporter described as ``so tidy, so clean, it seemed positively unhackerlike.''