If you had trouble accesing government websites in California a few days ago, don't worry, you weren't hallucinating: the federal government apparently briefly suspended the entire "ca.gov" domain after a hacker managed to insert redirects to porn sites onto several government sites. The site which triggered the red flag was the
Transportation Authority of Marin, California. The shutdown, which began at roughly 4:00PM (PST), quickly turned into such a problem that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even considered calling the President himself. Fortunately, by 7:30PM, everything was back in normal order, with officials concluding that no sensitive data had been stolen. At the moment, the TAM's site has an image of what it formerly looked like, with the text: "
Sorry for the inconvenience, our website is currently under construction. Please check back later. Thank you !!!"
But here's where the story gets interesting: apparently Sunbelt Security informed the city government about the hack
nearly a month ago on Sept. 12, 2007. However, according to Dianne Steinhauser, executive director of the Marin transportation authority, there was no official response due to fears that the warnings were "phishing" attacks (nevermind that a simple check of their site could've confirmed the reports). And, to top it off, simply do a search on Google with
"porn sex site:ca.gov"; at the time of writing, there are at least two sites which appear compromised.
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