/ 27 January 2010

Gauteng local government website falls prey to hackers

Gauteng’s department of local government’s website was hacked on Wednesday morning by what appeared to be a radical Islamic group.

The department was unaware of the problem when the Mail & Guardian sought comment on Wednesday and said they would be calling in IT crime investigations team.

Alongside a photograph of local government minister Kgaogelo Lekgoro was the headline: “Hacked by CeCen Hack Team”.

This is followed by images of a child without legs and an unidentified man sporting military attire emblazoned with Arabic writing.

There is also the slogan of “ALLAHU EKBER !” followed by:

“denmark israel asshole Americas

45 thousand people will give account

Hooray Chechnya”

An accompanying track also played upon visiting the website.

The group’s website could not be accessed as the IP was banned.

Fred Mokoko, spokesperson for the department, said a new website would be launched in about a month.

“The new site will integrate the housing and local government sites,” he said. “We will speed up its launch as it is all ready anyway.”

This follows a glitch on the South African Airways website on the weekend. Visitors to flysaa.com were met with a message saying that the website had expired on January 17 2010 and was “pending renewal or deletion”, News24 reported.