Transport Minister Jozef Ráž. (source: TASR)
The official website of the Transport Ministry was attacked by hackers who used it to discreetly promote several online Thai casinos. Although the website appeared to function properly at first glance, it linked to potentially dangerous content, reports the Sme daily.
Moreover, such promotion is illegal in Slovakia since the casinos probably have not obtained a necessary licence. Such platforms cannot be promoted in the country.
When the daily contacted the ministry earlier on Monday, the website was taken down, showing only a message that read "reconstruction". The ministry later replied to the Sme reporter, saying that an "external system" outside of the internal ministry environment had been infected and a foreign link was embedded into the former. The ministry added internal systems were not hacked and that only the xml structure was damaged.
The website is now once again available.
Left: The ministry website upon being taken down. Right: An online casino promotion on the ministry website. (source: SME)
According to the daily, the ministry website had been hacked at least since October 1 last year, quite possible even earlier.
In attacks such as this one, hackers take advantage of insufficient security of websites created on older version of popular content management systems. They insert a promotional link inside the system that then appears to be a part of the website. Since they cannot be accessed from the main page, the owner of the website does not even know what has happened.
Hackers earn money from every click on the content. By using official websites such as in this case the ministry website, they may also try to make the casino websites to appear as more trustworthy for search engines.
In January, the Land Registry Office has been crippled by a large-scale cyber attack from abroad. The services are still not available in their full extent. Later in the same month, health insurer VšZP was also targeted by a DoS attack.
