A Second Hack Into Delaware County Government Website

A hacker repeated intrusion into the government Website of Delaware (USA) County in a single week. On Saturday 24, 2007, visitors saw on the site an image of Turkey's map in flames together with a sword covered with blood and lot of words surrounding it.

Hackers had defaced the front page of the site with pictures and groups of Hindi, Gujarati and Arabic words without their translations. This impeded the normal operations of the Website useless and people could not access the required information on property and court.

By Saturday mid-afternoon, county computer technicians were trying to shut down the government Website in order to mend it, said Marianne Grace, executive director of Delaware County. By around 1.30 pm the site was completely inaccessible to visitors.

Delaware County councilman, Michael Puppio, said they would repair the site as early as possible. Unfortunately, such events occurred in today's age of technology, he added. The County will have to find out the details of the hack. Zwire published Puppio's statement on its Website.

There was no compromise of any information at the Website of the County, declared James DiMeo, Deputy Director, Data Processing, Delaware County. According to several other officials, the court assessment and tax records were also safe, as they were kept on a mainframe. It's only the homepage that had been exploited, James added.

Since the County's Website is hosted by the Intermediate Unit, the County government contacted the Unit's officials. All the files also dwell on a machine at the Morton office of the Intermediate Unit.

According to DiMeo, the visitors to the site on February 24 were in no way vulnerable to viruses. DiMeo further added that the Intergovernmental Affairs Office (IAO) was working to restore the site while Delaware was altering the site format.

But DiMeo said the mechanisms being put to change the site was not fully secure. Luckily, only the appearance of the site was damaged.

According to Delaware County Solicitor, John P. McBlain, it seemed somebody hijacked the site and just entered the system. Both Grace and McBlain said the hacking incidence was harmless and lasted for only a brief moment.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/12/2007