BPDNews home page hacked
Friday afternoon update: BPDNews is back up.
Friday morning update: Looks like the site is still having problems. Guys, might it be time to consider another hosting company - or let the city IS department host it?
Update: The site no longer has the hacker message, but the home page is a week out of date.
Looks like BPDNews has been hacked by somebody in Turkey. Instead of your latest Boston crime news and stats, all you get right now is:
hacked by metlak / Ownz here / Fuck papa
The source code shows this stunning page was built in Microsoft FrontPage set to Turkish. A Google search shows Metlak, some sort of Turkish hacker collective, has been quite busy; usually the defaced sites say something about Bush, or promise flaming death to anybody who disses Turkey.
The hacking seems limited to the home page - other pages still work, although without the toolbar on the home page, it's pretty impossible to navigate the site.
Although BPDNews is run by Boston Police, it's hosted on a third-party Web server rather than on a city computer. That host has a live online chat system; I used it to relay the news (I need my crime-news fix!) and they were already aware of it:
Our senior techs are working on this and will fix this ASAP
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This has put the fear of god in me
I just spent two hours making sure I knew how to both back-up and restore my files.
Ugh!!!
BPDNews.com still hacked
I haven't been to BPDNews in a few days, but I just visited it and found only the "hacked by metlak / Ownz here / Fuck papa" message.
By the way, I tried to leave a comment on a BPDNews article about arrests at the Cannabis Freedom Rally, saying that the arrests were a waste of police and court resources. The last time I looked, the comment had not been posted.