Hacker forces Royal Navy to suspend website

A hacker claims to have broken into the main website run by the British Royal Navy, www.royalnavy.mod.uk, revealing usernames and passwords of administrators.

The hacker, who calls himself TinKode and is believed to hail from Romania, posted information on the web about the compromise and the sensitive passwords he was able to uncover.

How embarrassing.

At the time of writing the Royal Navy has replaced its entire website with a static image which simply says:

Unfortunately the Royal Navy website is currently undergoing essential maintenance. Please visit again soon

In the past TinKode has revealed security holes in NASA’s website, and published information about SQL injection vulnerabilities in sites belonging to the US Army.

TinKode’s attack is particularly embarrassing for the British Ministry of Defence, as just last month protecting against cyber attacks was declared in the National Security Strategy to be a…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.