Saturday, May 19, 2012

Monrovia's website hacked in the name of global warming - San Gabriel Valley Tribune

MONROVIA - The day before the city's 126th birthday celebration, officials scrambled early Friday to restore the city's website after it was hacked overnight.

The hacked website, by a person or group identifying itself as "LatinHackTeam," urged readers to follow its hack team on Twitter and to "stop global warming." With the aid of their consultant, city officials restored the website at about 9 a.m. Friday.

"We're trying to figure out what's the easiest way to fix it and in the same mode, how they got in and what vulnerability they got through to figure out how to stop it next time," Mitch Cochran, the city's information systems manager, said just before it was fixed.

"We have a consultant that helps us with the website and they're looking at it this morning as well."

After the website was restored, Cochran said the investigation into the incident would continue.

It seemed to be "a hacking exercise" more than anything else, he said, since the hackers' message was not very strong.

"It's almost like a car joyride," he said. "I think someone hacked it because they could."

But Councilman Tom Adams said he was concerned about the incident.

"So far it looks like no real damage has been done but the fact that people are getting in the door is troublesome," Adams said. "Next time, they might do some real damage. It's like we don't have a good enough lock on the door or someone left it unlocked."

Cochran said that since the city's website is hosted offsite, it does not contain any personal or private data from city files or systems.

"There is no advantage of them finding anything since that website stands by itself," he said.

This isn't the first time Monrovia's website has been hacked. About three or four years ago, there was an organization based out of the Chicago area that redirected Monrovia's front page to an anti-George W. Bush slogan. There was also another incident prior to that, Cochran said, with a different political message.

The Twitter profile LatinHackTeam, which uses the icon of a woman wearing a bandana around her face, had 422 Twitter followers as of Friday.

While hacking into government websites is illegal, prosecution of those responsible can be difficult for various reasons, Cochran said.

"We're going to investigate whether we can prosecute and find them," he said. "If we will, we will."

Mayor Mary Ann Lutz said it's a shame people consider it fun to hack websites since "it causes havoc and costs money."

Adams said city officials need to take a hard look at their security and not just on their website.

"If we have the same lax security that we do on our website as we do everything else, that's very troublesome," he said.

City Manager Laurie Lile could not be reached for comment on Friday.

brenda.gazzar@sgvn.com

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