The official website of the Catholic diocese of Raphoe was interfered with last week by internet hackers who placed pornographic images on it. The images were placed on the pages of the site which normally contain Mass times and weekly sermons.
The secretary of the diocese, Fr Michael McKeever, said the hackers’ work was brought to his attention last Wednesday and took immediate steps to address the problem.
He said he was shocked and added that he was not aware whether it was child or adult pornography that had been inserted on the website. “I’m told it was people accessing the website through Google and whenever I went on, because I know the address, it was all as normal,” said Fr McKeever.
He said that he believed it was the first time the website of any diocese in Ireland had been targeted in such a way.
Experts had advised the diocese that hackers scan the internet for ‘open sites’ which can be used to upload files.
“I don’t believe they care what website it is,” he remarked. “Normally we’d use the site for Mass times and parish information and sometimes the weekly sermons.”
Fr McKeever thanked the “decent minded people” who contacted the diocese to tell it of the attack on the website.
He said the site had returned to normal and would be more closely monitored from now on.
However when we here in CW have attempted to log on to the site to validate the claims of Fr McKeever, it was still not accessible.
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