Hacking News

Pennsylvania Website Hacked

However, the website is now available

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

7th of January 2008, 22:06 GMT

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A new hack attack targeted the official Pennsylvania website one week ago, as some hackers who were located in China attempted to infiltrate into the page. The state representatives took down the entire website, no matter the content was affected or not, Mia DeVane,

a spokeswoman for the Office of Administration, said according to "The Morning Call". Although the hack attack managed to invade some parts of the website, no private information was stolen, the same source added.

''Our IT security experts looked at the network domain, which came out of China. At this point, we believe our anti-virus software prevented any PCs from being taken over. This is something that we fight every day. Viruses are a constant issue. We fight them off every day, and it's successful", the mentioned representative said according to the same source.

The good thing is that the IT experts managed to repair the website pretty fast, so it got back online after a few hours since it was taken down. Meanwhile, the visitors of the websites got the following message as "The Morning Call" explained:

''The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Web site that you are trying to reach is either not available or is undergoing maintenance. Please try back later. Thank you for your patience.''

It was proved once again that public websites are pretty vulnerable, whether they are owned by individuals, security companies or even state departments. That's why you're always advised to keep your antivirus up-to-date, to apply the latest patches for your operating system and avoid visiting suspicious or compromised pages that may attempt to deploy some sort of infection on your computer.

The Pennsylvania authorities found themselves quite lucky, as there was no malware injected into the website content because such a popular website could quickly affect thousands of Internet consumers.

TAGS:

hack | attack | security | malware

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