Hackers Take U.K Government, University & School Websites Under Their Control

According to the news from Backup Technology published on June 9, 2009, numerous websites that the U.K government operates seem to have come under hackers' grip to include references and links that point to illegitimate websites, serving pornography, cialis, Viagra, and other questionable items.

These hijacked sites that consist of universities, primary schools, Forestry Commission, the DSA and different government forums and websites, have become the victims of various exploits such as loopholes affecting these sites' software and cross-site scripting bugs.

Say the security researchers that the hacks mean significant risk for innocent people who come across these malicious web pages through spam mails or search engines. Visitors impose faith in .gov.uk websites and fearlessly click through them only to end up becoming infected with a virus or spyware or get channeled towards a site promoting cialis or Viagra.

Moreover, hackers exploit the trust, which search engines like Google put on government sites. Accordingly, they insert their malicious web page into these most relied on domains and easily gain high ranking among the search results, without having to create a site of their own.

Besides, the problem is not limited to .gov.uk domains. It also permeates to the .ac.uk sites that are created specifically for colleges, universities and similar academic institutions.

Perhaps, the worse involves the hijacking of websites of secondary and primary schools that students are encouraged to read. Security researchers discovered that more than 30 domains that schools used had been contaminated due to malicious content capable of diverting students visiting those domains, which the children knew to be the safe sites of their school, onto an unrelated website that hackers owned. This third-party website could harbor virus, spyware or adult content.

Security researchers explain that all these problems are the result of websites running poorly designed and insecure software. According to then, hackers will at all times attempt to take advantage of flawed sites and leave wide security gaps in them.

Thus security specialists recommend the use of extremely elevated security software such as up-to-date anti-virus and similar anti-malware programs to ward off the dangers from such damaged sites.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 6/15/2009