News of the day is that the script kiddies have gotten hold of the admin passwords for Gauteng’s Department of Local Government content management system and decided to add some Arabic flavour. A message “Hacked by CeCeN Hack Team” now greets visitors to the previously unknown site. The message extends further with:
“Allahu Ekber! denmark israel asshole Americas – 45 thousand people will give account – Hooray Chechnya”.
I like the background music though – that was a nice touch! Visit the site here or a screengrab here if it gets switched off.
Elaborate hoax
Industry experts, however, are calling the hack “an elaborate hoax”. Some claim the “hack” is simply a carefully crafted “viral marketing campaign” to try and get the website its first visitor. South Africa, they say, with a mere 400 000 broadband subscribers, simply has not had the internet penetration that would see people visiting a bland local government website instead of getting their usual facebook fix, and so a drastic approach was developed to pump up the traffic to the government site.
Only time will tell if the approach works, or if the site will simply return to its previous anonymity.
One reply on “Gauteng Department of Local Government Site Hacked”
Nicely spotted. On Saturday the site was down, so if it was a viral marketing campaign it didn’t work.
Last year the Department of Arts and Malware/Culture distributed malware, according to Google. See http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2009/09/department-of-arts-and-malware.html