Fergie's Tech Blog

Hackers Break Into U.S. Government Travel Site, Feed Users Attack Code

Gregg Keizer writes on ComputerWorld:

A travel reservations Web site used by several federal agencies was hacked last week, and it shunted unsuspecting users to a malicious domain, according to information that Computerworld has obtained.

The site, GovTrip.com, is currently unavailable to federal employees through their offices' intranet; the version accessible via the public Internet is also offline.

Sometime before Feb. 11, hackers breached the site, then modified it to redirect users to a rogue URL that in turn directed attack code against their systems, according to the General Services Administration (GSA) and e-mail sent to federal workers that Computerworld has seen.

"Last week, some users of GovTrip, when logging on to the GovTrip site, were redirected to a site that delivered malicious software to their computers," an e-mail sent to employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) read. "The incident, which also affected other federal agencies, was quickly identified by systems security. At this time, the GovTrip site is not safe to use and should not be accessed."

Today, GSA spokesman Robert Lesino confirmed the GovTrip hack and said the redirect hit users on Feb. 11. "The incident was quickly identified," said Lesino, who declined to answer specific questions, citing the ongoing investigation. He also said that no user information was believed to have been compromised by the hack.

posted by Fergie @ 2/18/2009 12:54:00 PM