OH laaa laaa, the ANC website has been hacked and now has links to pornographic websites in the footer..
Not the sort of thing we want to see on our Governments website is it? The website was done by a company called Unwembi, a company in Cape Town (irony, lol) – I feel for them, 8am tomorrow their phones are going to go off the hook!
Interestingly enough, the code looks like it has been done in Dreamweaver, and there’s no initial sign of a open source CMS framework being used, however, there are queries such asshow.php?doc=ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/umrabulo31/index.html&type=Publications
which would show that it might be a custom built one. If there wasn’t a CMS, then the “hacker” would have had to target the FTP, which is highly unlikely. Further research shows that they’re running Apache on Ubuntu, which in my experience should be quite secure.
The website makes use of HierMenus, which is a paid-for JS solution, I wonder if they have a license? Can you say “law suite”!?
My guess is that it’s a custom CMS system, which clearly has security flaws.
MyBroadBand reports that ANC Spokesperson, Brian Sokutu said that he would look into the matter, but could not do anything until Monday.
It would appear that the “hacker” has something extra going on, because you don’t see the adverts every single time you visit the site – I was lucky enough to see them when I loaded the site in IE, but they didn’t appear in FF and won’t appear in IE again?
Check this out – ANC loves iMod..
Looks like its been patched up now – i saw it earlier this evening and the ads were still there (in FF) – and now they’re gone.
Someone must have received a not to pleasant phone call on a sunday evening…
Ye, seems like they must have gone into damage control mode, but check this – http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?doc=new.html&title=We%20love%20imod.co.za!
lol!
now we know whoe is funding the ANC, the porn market and affiliate commissions.
It is the most horrible feeling when you find out that your website has been hacked – it is such malicious and destructive behavior.
It is really sad that we have to have to keep on increasing web security just because there are screwed up people out there who want to prove a point.
Surely these hackers aren’t sophisticated enough to cover their tracks – hope they can be tracked down – they don’t usually just hack one site…
At the end of the day, I just hope that they can resolve the matter smoothly and fix up the security flaws :)
I think its brilliant someone has hacked the ANC… and yes, it is so ironic that The website was done by a company called Unwembi in CT, such a lag!
Well done Mr Hacker
PS: so glad to see that ANC are loving iMOD, classic;)
Ye mate, perhaps it’ll push them to embrace the Internet a bit more and understand the importance. I think we all need to remember, despite feelings/opinions, that the ANC is our government and we should all see this as being bad and hope that they can resolve it quickly as it represents all of us. Ye, glad they love iMod too ;)
/facepalm
sigh… i dont think it was hacked, i think it’s a BASIC security flaw which anyone could exploit. The site is BADLY built – and like you said, there are lawsuits a plenty to be won against the ANC it’s piece of shit web company.
Umwebi classifies itself as web, print and media. In my experience companies that operate in traditional and digital streams usually fail at both.
Much like the IEC website – the ANC shows how incapable it is of spending effectively in the industry.
Hire professionals you stupid… [insert whatever]
you get what you vote for :(
Just a side note..
The ANC party website and the government website are not the same. This is just the party website for ANC supporters and members. ie if the ANC ever lost an election this website would still exist. Its still not acceptable for it to be breached but not as bad as if it was a government website….sorry just knit-picking
PJC – You’re spot on, I wrote the post late last night, and have to admit that I definitely muddled things up a little bit, because they are our government, but it’s not the goverment website – thank you for pointing that out, I appreciatae it.