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One of many web sites of the UK Division for Transport (DfT) was caught serving porn in the present day.
The actual DfT subdomain behind the mishap, on most days, gives very important DfT statistics for the general public and the division’s marketing strategy.
A really British thanksgiving
The UK DfT’s charts.dft.gov.uk web site was seen serving porn in the present day, as confirmed by BleepingComputer.
Previously, the Charts subdomain has offered marketing strategy paperwork and essential statistics on numerous DfT companies equivalent to numbers on public transport utilization, roadway accessibility instances, and driving exams.
Though the location is now not reachable, as of some hours in the past, visiting charts.dft.gov.uk paved the best way for some racy visitors:
UK gov DfT subdomain caught serving porn (BleepingComputer)
The mishap was first noticed by The Crow, which moreover noticed that all the dft.gov.uk area was itself made to redirect to a WordPress plugin web page, whereas the Division seems to have been investigating the difficulty.
In our exams, BleepingComputer noticed the official dft.gov.uk web site led to a password-protected WordPress web page residing at: eu-hauliers.dft.gov.uk.
Your entire dft.gov.uk redirected to a password-protected WordPress web page earlier in the present day (BleepingComputer)
The dangling… DNS
Though the precise reason behind the Charts mini-site serving porn shouldn’t be identified, it seems the subdomain did have a CNAME DNS document pointing to an Amazon S3 occasion.
The offending (NSFW) occasion continues to be up at charts.dft.gov.uk.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com, exhibiting illicit content material. Thankfully, charts.dft.gov.uk now not leads there.
What stays unclear is, if this was merely a case of area hijacking—that’s, a dangling AWS S3 occasion that the Charts web site pointed to, was claimed by a menace actor and made to serve grownup content material, or did an attacker get hold of sufficient entry to DfT’s registrar’s programs and altered the DNS entry for charts.dft.gov.uk.
The second situation is tougher to tug off and would elevate some severe questions on how safe the DfT’s digital infrastructure is.
This is not the primary time a authorities web site was caught serving express content material both.
In September this 12 months, U.S. authorities web sites had been spammed with viagra advertisements and grownup content material after attackers exploited a vulnerability within the Laserfiche Kinds software program product, utilized by a number of authorities websites.
In July, guests to main information websites together with The Washington Submit and HuffPost noticed the embedded movies in information tales changed with porn after the vid.me area was acquired by a 3rd celebration.
The entry to the primary DfT web site dft.gov.uk has since been restored. Nevertheless, the sysadmins appear to have pulled the plug on charts.dft.gov.uk altogether, which is now not accessible.
BleepingComputer contacted the UK DfT each by way of phone and electronic mail previous to writing and we’re awaiting their response.
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