Romanian hacker sinks Royal Navy website
The Royal Navy's website has been forced to shut down today as a result of being hacked on Friday by a Romanian hacker known as TinKode.
The hacker gained access to the website on 5 November using a common attack method known as SQL injection.
TinKode published details of the information he recovered, which included user names and passwords of the site's administrators.
A Royal Navy spokesperson confirmed the site had been compromised and said: "There has been no malicious damage."
As a precaution the site has been "temporarily suspended" whilst the security teams are investigating how the hacker got access. They said no confidential information had been disclosed.
The Royal Navy website is currently just a static screen grab of the site with a black box bearing the text: "Unfortunately the Royal Navy website is undergoing essential maintenance. Please visit again soon."
TinKode first mentioned the attack on his Twitter stream and added a web link to a page that contained more details about what he had found.
Graham Cluley, senior security analyst at Sophos, told the BBC the incident was "immensely embarrassing, particularly in the wake of the recent security review where hacking and cybercrime attacks were given the top priority.
"Now we have the Royal Navy with egg on its face."
Mr Cluley said the hacker had apparently gained access to the Navy's blog, Jackspeak, and to an area called Global Ops.
"He's obviously more of a show-off type of hacker rather than malicious," said Mr Cluley.
-
- groups:
- Community, News and Politics
-
- tags:
- Hackers, Navy, Ministry of Defence, Royal Navy, 2 more
