Turks take over Palmer website

PALMER — Members looking for the schedule of speakers on the Greater Palmer Chamber of Commerce website Wednesday probably weren’t prepared for what they found instead.

Sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, a group of hackers from Turkey replaced the chamber’s home page with one of their own. The site, in Turkish, contained militant and anti-Semitic text and images.

Mat-Su Technical Services owner Jesse Jones said he was contacted about the problem at 10 a.m. Wednesday. He said he logged in to the back end of the website, identified the file that had been changed, and fixed the chamber’s website by 10:20 a.m.

Jones said it doesn’t appear any information was changed on the site or stolen from the membership database.

“Some organization in Turkey has been hacking a bunch of websites for the past couple of years,” Jones said. “They don’t steal any information. They don’t redirect to another website. There is no malware.”

Jones is not sure how the hackers changed the website. He said the site only has two user accounts and a very strong password, so it is more likely the breach happened in the web server or the software that runs the site. He has contacted both companies, and both are pointing the finger at the other, he said.

Coincidentally, the chamber’s Facebook page was hacked as well. It doesn’t appear the same group did both, Jones said, as Facebook is having problems nationwide with profiles being hacked.

This is a good opportunity for a quick refresher about web security, Jones said. Strong passwords should not have complete English words and should include a combination of numerals with upper- and lower-case letters. If something does happen, Jones said, notify the web host and authorities if necessary.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.