Hundreds of UK Government Sites Hacked

A large scale attack on UK government websites has been discovered. Hundreds of sites for schools, government offices, universities and more have been compromised to include links and other references to porn sites or shady pharmacies. The hacks were likely carried out via SQL injection attacks or cross site scripting and the sites were obviously chosen because users would not think twice about trusting them. Visitors who click through are either redirected to sites selling drugs such as Viagra or sites displaying hardcore porn. Some of the compromised sites attempt to download malware.

The most disturbing part of the attacks is that many of the sites belong to elementary schools and are visited by students. The hackers behind the attack apparently have no problem directing children to porn sites. Even the search results for these sites have been changed to refer to porn and shady pharmacies.

It’s not known who’s behind the attack and the UK government has not yet had any comment. One thing is sure however, and that’s that they need to take a serious look at the security and software on their sites. It’s poorly designed software and careless security (such as not disabling unused FTP logins) that lead to these types of attacks. Experts warn that it’s possible that people who are infected by compromised sites may begin to file lawsuits against them for negligence.

However I’m not sure that’s the way to go-after all it is up to each of us to properly secure our computers and use up to date anti-virus software!