Hackers hit road bridge website with 'porn ads'

Published on Thursday 7 February 2008 21:16

COMPUTER hackers planted pop-up ads for pornography on the Forth Road Bridge's website, it was reported last night.

IT experts revealed that the bridge operator's site for drivers had been turned into a "filth jamboree".

Web users are believed to been redirected to a Turkish site as a result of the security breach.

It is thought that the incident could have left some computers which visited the website infected with malicious software.

The Register website said the attack by hackers is thought to have happened about a week ago.

Officials with the Forth Estuary Transport Authority last night confirmed that its website was closed for several hours on Wednesday following the security breach.

A spokesman said: "We took our website offline for a few hours as a precautionary measure after a security breach on the servers of the external company that hosts the website.

"The issue has now been resolved and the web-hosting company is reviewing its security arrangements."

Fife-based IT firm Roundtrip Solutions, which investigated the incident, said: "This highlights how a legitimate website can be compromised to serve nasties to visitors."