Feds Shut Down California's Domain Name

Filed in archive Spam News on October 8, 2007

Last week the US General Services Administration, which oversees government websites, shut down California's domain name after a hacker was able to reroute incoming traffic to cal.gov sites to a porn site. The shut down affected several different state offices including the Superior Court of Madera County. Before the shut down, users attempting to access the court's site were redirected to a site advertising viagra. The shutdown was reversed after state officials complained, but the GSA defended its decision. The hacked servers have since been fixed:

A GSA spokeswoman did not dispute California's account of what happened, but said that her agency was looking into Tuesday's events and "will be able to provide an update once the details are gathered."

Security experts expressed amazement Wednesday that the federal government would undertake such a drastic move without first trying to resolve the problem with the state. "That's hard core, given how much stuff there is under ca.gov," said Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture with DNS appliance vendor Infoblox Inc. "Maybe they thought there was some sort of imminent threat."