Royal Navy site hack forces MoD to suspend website

A Romanian hacker known as ‘TinKode’ has claimed to have broken into the main British Royal Navy website, www.royalnavy.mod.uk, and posted sensitive information such as usernames and administrator passwords.

Currently, The Royal Navy has replaced its entire website with a static image which says, “Unfortunately the Royal Navy website is currently undergoing essential maintenance. Please visit again soon.”

“The MoD is lucky that on this occasion, those behind the hack have been motivated more by mischief than malice,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“With luck this security breach is more of an embarrassment to the Ministry of Defence than a more significant assault on a website presenting the public face of an important part of the armed forces. All website owners should take note of this attack and the need to build secure websites that cannot be breached easily by hackers. The Royal Navy could have found itself in a far more sinister situation if hackers had chosen to embed spyware onto the website and infected visitors’ computers to steal classified information. Owners of other websites shouldn’t be under the misapprehension that it couldn’t also happen to them” he added.