Leaders Call for a Review after Hacking of 49 House Websites
Posted on 18 Feb 2010 at 06:07 am | Tagged as: Living With Hardware
After President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address, a hacker has attacked the 49 websites of the House of Representatives from both political affiliations. The content on the sites were replaced with obscene posts insulting the president. This is according to a report by the Associated Press.
Jeff Ventura, chief administrative officer and spokesman for the House said that while most of the websites for the House are completely managed by in-house technicians, the individual offices can contract with third party providers for managed hosting updates and new security features. The sites that were subjected to the online attack were under the management of GovTrends, a private vendor that is based in Virginia.
In an interview with the AP, Ventura said that while it implemented updates, GovTrends left the sites vulnerable. This has enabled the hacker to get into the individual member websites and committees quickly. The hackings occurred overnight.
The attacker left a message on the sites insulting the president who has just spoken at the House. The message said it came from Brasil. However, where the attack really came from has still yet to be established along with its particular political motives.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the US House of Representatives along with Minority Leader John Boehner have already called for an inquiry and review on how the hackers managed to overtake the 49 affected websites. Ventura adds that 18 websites under the House and that which are managed by GovTrends have also experienced the same kind of attacks back in August.
